After meeting up with and dropping off the rescued children with their parents that had gotten separated during the Autobots' arrival on The Pit, they returned to Renth. Two months had passed since. Alexis' mom and dad were staying with her until they were ready to travel to Refuge. Cynthia had been waiting for them upon their return and had remained.
Her brother-in-law cleared out quarters for her family, even gave her family copies of her own coolant band, allowing them to be comfortable and healthy.
Perhaps her extended Vildan family complained in only the way that they could, but they proved more accommodating than resentful, allowing for her family to reside in peace. They didn't interfere with their lives too much, even kept their distance. She really couldn't find that a reason to complain. If they thought she was emotional though, the rest of her family was even more so, their emotional outbursts an obvious disturbance that confounded and interested her in-laws.
The incident that occurred when they tried to separate Cynthia and her mom from their husbands, a show all of its own that if Vildans weren't prone to gossip and maliciousness would have still been held against them and talked about.
They couldn't get that married human couples preferred to stay, and yes live and even sleep together, not just when trying to have children, but for long-term.
As weeks turned into months, as the house seemed to become quiet and still, only a brave few of her husband's relatives venturing out, Alexis tried not to become too disappointed if not all were willing to make an effort.
She did unbalance their lives when she married Airaih, when she brought Aaron back, when her family came to stay and recuperate. It wasn't as if they were snubbing her or even her family. They were just ill-equipped to deal with such sentimentally charged individuals that had been separated for far too long and then reunited. Alexis and her family made no qualms about showing their love, or their feelings, or letting others know of their happiness of having found one another.
In the conservatory with her family, she watched Aaron play with Cynthia and Josh, glanced over at her father who was sitting with her mom on a padded bench reading a book, some provided glasses allowing him to read the fine print with ease.
This was family. This was how life was supposed to be. Surrounded by those you loved.
Thundercracker wanted to be a part of this life, of her son's. But as a friend. As a confident. Not pursuing her as she had predicted.
But that had been a ploy.
He'd just been giving her time to settle in and be with her family. She saw him often though, as he spent much time with her and Aaron.
He even came around the rest of her family when necessary, which was strained and a work in progress, was still an experience that made her internally cringe. Her parents didn't hate Thundercracker. They were even polite to him. But bring them all together and things got really silent, really fast. Her parents would watch her more than even TC. Thundercracker hardly spoke.
The night before was when she realized that he hadn't been showing restraint in regards to what she believed he wanted from her, but patience.
After settling Aaron down for the night, now in his own room that was across from her own, Alexis walked up the stairs to the rooftop, now one of their most used meeting spots. From the start that night felt different. And it would be several minutes later that Alexis would realize how silly she had been. How stupid she was to believe that nothing had to change between them.
Always prompt, Alexis didn't have to wait long until Thundercracker joined her. The Seeker landed perfectly on the roof that while large for her was just big enough for him to stand.
"You came."
She nodded her head, smiled up at him. "You asked me to."
Whatever he wanted to tell her, he hadn't been able to tell her earlier when TC took her and Aaron to Tarth, an area in the far north that had a wide variety of wild animals that Aaron was studying in his classes.
Alexis felt nervous. Had an inkling of what he wanted to say. They may have spent time with one another on The Pit, but here on Renth the months had allowed them to see each other often outside what she considered a hostile environment, his clearance to the planet something that while unprecedented, did not go to waste.
If she thought Vildans stared at her and her family, they most certainly looked the Seeker over. Sometimes she forgot how imposing he was, how resplendent of power and danger. Willingly disarmed, the Seeker was allowed on the planet, a temporary clearance that came with a shadow of a security force that she was sure trailed their every move, when TC didn't decide to lose them, which really shouldn't have been that much fun.
"You brought your tablet." He observed even though the device wasn't visible, making her wonder all over again just how much he picked up about her. Probably a lot more than she would have been comfortable with or wanted to think about.
"Yes." She put her pack down, wiggled it out of her bag and turned it on.
Thundercracker dipped his head. His optics ignited with a blaze of concentration. Her tablet hummed lowly while pictures and documents were downloaded, data and text scrolling across the screen in a flurry of activity.
"What's this?" she asked as soon as the humming stopped, her overworked tablet going into sleep mode.
"I want to court you with intentions to bond."
She felt blood rush to her cheeks. Her heart actually skipped two beats. Her lungs strained as her stomach felt as if the ground had been pulled out from under. She really should have known this was coming. Alexis saw a prelude to it on The Pit. But she was entirely unprepared for what his very serious and deeply resonating words did to her, besides rendering her unable to think properly.
Thundercracker continued to speak, calmly, factually. But he was having a difficult time keeping optic contact, which proved that what he was saying wasn't something typical, not for him, not for her, not in the slightest. "This is highlights, documents, videos, recounts and reports of some key events in my life. While they have been abridged, they have not been altered."
She glanced down at her tablet's blank screen. Most people would have talked, but this, she found, suited them both. And yet she found herself asking a ridiculous question that had been quite evident from on the onset of his proclamation.
"You want to date me?" But it wasn't that he wanted to court her, but trying to prove that she should that made her feel warm and woozy and gushing with affection.
He flew over that question.
"I have already shown, in what time I was allowed that I am most amenable to the prospect of taking and providing for both you and your son, even your family. I will be the last defense you will need." He stood on the corner of the roof, his impressive wings folded behind his back, the sharp tips peaking along the edges of his shoulders, glimmering in the shadows.
Alexis looked away from his striking angular visage in order to get her words in order. She finally spoke, "We are so different, TC. Our beliefs, our lives, our ages, even our bodies… "
He cut in, eager to prove otherwise. "We are more compatible than you realize." His optics dimmed, one of his hands moved to the side of his leg where he squeezed it tightly into a fist and then flattened it out. For what TC said next, he didn't look away. "And I will take you in whatever manner you are comfortable with." Thundercracker told her in a way that let her know that that would lead to far more different and exotic things. Things that, yes, she had found herself thinking about because she was interested in Thundercracker, and was so very captivated by him. They'd spent a lot of time together of late, and yet…
"You mean… us… you mean sex." Sometimes she couldn't stop her own mouth.
He seemed to waver at her straightforwardness, his optics dimmed completely, and he didn't speak until several long beats had passed. "I mean intimacy beyond all that you have experienced before," he husked.
That vow had her skin tingling. She internally trembled from the intense, stimulating tone he used, recognizing, not for the first time, that he too had a voice that could weaken her.
Alexis tried to look away from him, tried to think for a moment, but she couldn't. Except for one thing. She was deeply attracted to him. And not just as a human, but the technology advanced being that he was. She always had a thing for gadgets, for electronics, and while TC was so far beyond that, he was also an embodiment of the unknown, of the wondrous, of someone who would always, no matter how long she knew him, prove a mystery.
"Do you love me, Thundercracker?"
"In the manner in which you define love, then, yes, I do, beyond all doubts and reason."
His deeply sincere words did not reach her as they should have. She leaned against the ledge, her body suddenly heavy. He loved her. But Alexis had known that for sometime now. And yet Thundercracker saying so, even if not outright, did leave her with a glimmer of a future that was complicated and pained, was more difficult than it needed to be. Because they were different, too different. And not love, or marriage, or anything else would change that.
Alexis had become pragmatic since losing Airaih, maybe even coldly practical. She cared for Thundercracker, wanted him, but that was not the same as giving her and Aaron's life over to Thundercracker, as tying them to the Seeker and his dangerous life.
Truthfully, Alexis didn't want to love him. Not even because of the complications or even what he had done or had been a part of, or even who or what he was, but because when she loved, she gave her all, put everything she was into the attachment that could only come from minds and souls in sync.
Did TC even have a soul? He certainly didn't believe himself to have a god. And as God was more a fixture in her life than all others, as her faith led and guided her, that would be yet another thing that he just wouldn't be able to understand.
And yet he seemed to understand her so well and so fully most of the times that she could so easily forget about their differences. Sharaih was right, she did like differences in her companions, that had become the norm.
TC had no qualms that she was human. Alexis knew that. And the Seeker spending time with her and Aaron over the past months had allowed her to see that he wouldn't just make a father to Aaron if she allowed, but probably a really good one.
If only TC didn't remind her of Airaih. Yet wasn't it Airaih that originally reminded her of TC? A jumble of reasoning that distorted her perspective. Did she truly like taciturn men so much? And why did she find a man with subtle emotions and evolved logic, so highly evocative?
"What are you thinking so deeply about?"
Coming out of her thoughts and away from that rooftop where her thoughts had led her to, Alexis turned to her mom, staring at her as if she wasn't real, as if it were all a dream. Her mom had dyed her hair again, now a light brown. She hadn't changed much since she last saw her, maybe a wrinkle or two, but nothing that showed apparent wear. Aaron came up to them, tugging on his grandmother's arm. "Come, grandma. Grandpa wants you. He says that…"
Her parents loved Aaron, were getting along with Cynthia, who complained a little too much about Renth for Alexis' liking, obviously ready to return home to Refuge. How could someone not see the fascination that was the planet and its people, Alexis just couldn't understand. But apparently, Renth wasn't for everyone.
"Come, Alexis, lunch is ready," her father told her after moving a large branch to the side to see her. He no longer spoke in the booming voice of the half deaf, but the tone of any normal person. One of her cousins had repaired his hearing, had even replaced one of his eyes that had been blinded by a Con when he objected to the treatment of his fellow captives. Her father always did have a way with him, both repelling in his overly confrontational habits, and yet endearing when he was calm and rational. Not that her family had ever been the definition of normal. Her family could be chaotic, loud, argumentative and troublesome, a mixture of faults and failings, of tendencies for depression and pain and arguments.
But every family had their quirks and problems. Sometimes though, she couldn't help but believe they got more then their share. But they loved each other despite the fights and the words, forgave one another over and over again, came back together, shared with one another.
Her parents were getting along better than ever, her father seemed to appreciate her mother more. Good things could come out of terrible events.
She had her family back. And nothing was going to make her stop realizing what a blessing that was.
Alexis took another moment to appreciate the view. Light pushed through the glass paneling of the conservatory roof, making everything, both plants and family members, bright and colorful and appealing. Her son was having a conversation with Josh; her father pulled out her mom's chair so she could sit down.
She joined her family at the table, took Aaron's hand and then her brother's, bowed her head. Her father prayed and blessed the meal; they ate.
She and Aaron had been out with Thundercracker before. They'd even flown several times inside of him, something she found that her son enjoyed. But this was the first time since his proposal that they'd been together. He was expecting an answer. Alexis wanted to say no. Wanted to cut her ties and send him on his way.
Not that he would have allowed that.
He wasn't forceful, but he was dogged in his pursuit of what he wanted. And what he wanted was her, was Aaron, was a part in her life that seemed to be changing all over again with the inclusion of her parents.
Her mom and dad would be heading to Refuge soon. She would be remaining on Renth. They would visit each other though. But Alexis had grown so accustomed to them being around and with her and Aaron that the separation seemed unnecessary.
They were her family too.
A statement that had grown into an argument between Alexis and Josh. Nothing she had ever intended, as she had been quite determined not to say anything. Because anything said between them always had a high probability of getting back to her parents, and Alexis hadn't wanted to cause conflict.
When she was with her family, she thought of TC. When she was with TC, she thought of her family. Her mind a rush of questions, objections and proclamations that it was a wonder she hadn't had one of her customary migraines.
The trio was going to be gone for two days as Thundercracker showed them Renth as they'd never seen it before. She felt aware of her discomfort as they made their way into his now roomier cockpit, his engines coming on-line immediately after the two buckled in.
Alexis hoped he didn't notice the slight tremor in her fingers. Her hesitancy to even go. She'd read through most of the reports he'd given to her. They'd been fascinating. They'd been terrifying. He most certainly didn't edit it, from what she had read and seen and watched. And she didn't know whether to admire him for his unsettling honesty, or be horrified by the contents.
She hadn't been able to finish it yet. Not due to the length, but because the more she read, the more she didn't understand how she could so easily allow someone like him near her, or her son, or her family.
But it wasn't as simple as that. And what had occurred, the worst of it so far, has been so long ago, and when he was a soldier under the service of Megatron. While not an excuse, gave her a valid reason to cope.
Because that Thundercracker was not the TC she knew. Because this Thundercracker knew compassion, and mercy, and a tenderness of kindness. Because this one was so far beyond the written and described and recorded one that the two could have been separate entities.
And yet, a fear had come, an entirely new one that was more disturbing than ever, because her son was now involved. But Thundercracker wouldn't harm her or her family. And they'd been through too much for her to disregard him due to a very factual, and so far, violent recount of his past.
She was going on this trip so she could finish the documents and reports he'd give her, give him his answer and come to terms with exactly what he was to her. But Alexis was trepidatious, still stunned and overwhelmed by what she had gone over and read, something that had kept her up on more than one night and had taken away her sleep. Something that haunted her and reminded her of things she thought she had forgotten. And yet she still wanted to be near him. What did that say about her?
"Destination?" TC asked of her son.
Aaron looked at her, his eyes shining with youth and the subtly of his excitement. She swallowed hard. Felt a little dizzy. Her son liked TC. What was she allowing? How did any of this come about? And why still, did she trust their lives to him? Or was she just over thinking things? Her hands were now shaking, tears gathering at the corner of her eyes. She grabbed to her seat belt, turned around in her seat and took a deep breath and started to pray.
"Anywhere. As long as you go as fast as you did last time," Aaron told Thundercracker's console.
Two days she was going to be with him, a time that seemed longer than the passing months they'd shared. Sitting inside of him with her son who actually squealed as Thundercracker took off, she considered where she was and who she was with, and if it was going to be the last time.
That thought made her heart quiver.
It would have been easier if he never took her to Renth.
Easier if Timothy had never turned into Thundercracker.
Easier if she didn't care so much for him.
The past may be the past, but it still had voices, an ominous chorus of warning and doubts and promised terrors, some in her own voice.
Complications were to be expected. Well documented, highly detailed accounts though, were far harder to ignore.