Things will get better for Jane soon, I promise! But realistically, there are times when life comes along and throws a brick at your face.

R + R please!

*Disclaimer: I don't own transformers*

~ o ~

Once Prowl was stabilized, Optimus arrived shortly after pulling a huge trailer behind him. Turns out I'd been so focused on watching Ratchet patch Prowl's injury that I hadn't even realized that the Decepticons had fled. As Ratchet and Ironhide loaded Prowl into the trailer, which turns out was not empty but had a flat bed inside for transport; I looked around for Abby, finding her running around like a chicken and screaming at the top of her lungs. Skids and Mudflap were trying their darndest to calm her down, but I think the sight of them only worsened her fear, and I quickly transformed down before running over there to catch her.

I grabbed Abby's arm and immediately she freaked, scratching and screaming at me to let go. Then she realized it was me and drew me in for the biggest hug in the history of hugs ever given between us. When she finally pulled away, her eyes were narrowed, and she slapped me across the face.

"That's for not telling me the truth!" she said sternly, and my jaw dropped.

"Says the girl who thought I was crazy!" I countered, but her expression didn't fade.

"You could've been killed!" she yelled. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"That's just it," I said, "I wasn't." I grasped my locket, feeling the waves of pain wash over me as I thought about all the mistakes I'd made in a single day and what those mistakes had cost me. "I never should have gotten on Astraea," I said, tears pricking the corners of my eyes. "And Prowl—" My voice cracked.

Abby's face softened, and she hugged me again, this time rubbing small circles on my back. "For what it's worth, I am really sorry about Astraea," she said.

I didn't answer, just buried my head in the crook of her neck like I had used to do to my grandmother when I was too upset to speak. I didn't want to break down crying with the Autobots still around, but having Abby here just weakened the wall I had built around myself. I felt like a part of me had shattered.

For once Abby didn't say anything and just let me cry, and after a few minutes a clean-cut paramedic came over. "Prowl's condition has stabilized, but we need to get him back to base," he said in a voice that sounded remarkably like Ratchet. "In the meantime, I would like you to ride with me so I can tend to the injury you sustained to your wrist."

I pulled back from Abby and looked her square in the face. "What about Billy?" I asked, my voice sounding hollow even to my ears.

"What about old man Philips?" she replied. "Doesn't he have a couple of sheep next door?"

I blinked, before turning to the man I was pretty sure was Ratchet's holoform. He had neatly combed black hair and grumpy blue eyes. "Do you mind if we drop off my goat on the way?" I asked him, half expecting him to look at me like I was insane and say no. He did neither of those things, however, instead his gaze fixed to my face for a long moment, before he nodded and fizzled out.

Abby's face paled at the sight of him just fading from existence, but thankfully she just grabbed my hand and dragged me over to where Billy was currently head-butting Skids in the side door. Skids quickly reversed to get away from him, but Billy merely rammed him again. Mudflap, I noticed, also had a dent in the side of his door and steered clear of the goat altogether.

"What the fuck, man!"

"Not cool, yo!"

I couldn't help but laugh at the scene, forgetting my grief for a moment. I went over to Billy and grabbed his horn, pulling his face up to mine and kissing him on the nose. He mouthed my yellow-knit sweater, and I led him by the horn over to where the yellow search and rescue H2 Hummer was parked, waiting for us. The back part opened as we approached, and we climbed in the dual doors, pulling Billy in with us, earning an odd look from Ironhide who was nearby.

Ratchet set off as soon as we were situated, and I looked out the windows at my farm as we drove away. Both the house and pasture were empty now, and I felt a forlornness seep into my spark knowing that the next time I came back there would be no Astraea or Billy to greet me at the fence. I was completely alone now.

Ratchet pulled into the laneway of the next farm we came across, and me and Abby climbed out with Billy. I walked up to the front door and hesitated with my fist posed above it, suddenly unable to knock, before old man Philips himself appeared from around the barn with a bucket in his hand. He seemed surprised to see us and even more surprised to see the medical Hummer parked in his driveway.

"Can I help you with something?" he called, looking from me to Abby, who was holding Billy, to the Hummer and back again, his grey hair flopping over his eyes. I forced a smile onto my face and descended the porch steps to meet him.

"Actually, you can," I said ruefully. "I know this is sudden, but is there any way you could take in my goat Billy? I'm leaving town for a few weeks and have no one to look after him."

"This is quite sudden," he said, rubbing his chin. But at my pleading look, his old eyes softened. "But I do have plenty of room. So I don't suppose one more could hurt—"

"Oh, thank you!" I nearly cried. I had mixed feelings leaving Billy with old man Philips. Even though I'd never known him to anything but kind, Billy had never met him, and I felt as though I was abandoning him with with a stranger. He was all that I had left next to possessing the farm. And now, he too, would be gone.

As we drove away from old man Philips and Billy, I couldn't even bring myself to look out the windows. All in one day, I had lost nearly everything.

Ratchet's holoform appeared not long after we started driving, and wordlessly I held out my wrist for him to work on. He stared at me hard, before he vented and set to work on fixing my wrist without a word. Next to me Abby was quiet, but kept shooting me sympathetic looks. I ignored her, my body strangely numb as my mind replayed old images of Astraea and Billy playing in the pasture together, him licking the crumbs out of her feed bucket, him standing on her back, him beating at the back door so he could be fed.

And the grandparents. Always the grandparents. The ones who would never come back to me.

~ o ~

By the time we had boarded the pickup plane and flown back to Diego Garcia, Abby was sound asleep with her head in my lap. I had explained everything that I could to her on the way there, starting with the AllSpark and the attempted kidnapping, and then where I had spent that week away, what I had been doing, and why.

Naturally Abby had quite a few questions to ask, starting with why the hell I hadn't thought to just tell her the truth from the start. I did my best to answer each and every one of her questions, but, of course, there were many questions I couldn't answer, not because I was trying to hide things from her, but because I simply didn't know the answers myself.

I kept thinking about Prowl during the flight. More than anything I found that I wanted him to be all right. When Abby finally fell quiet and she lay with her head on my lap, I was tempted to leave and go check up on him. But, just as quickly as the thought came, the darkness in my mind clouded back over and I found myself instead staring blankly at Abby's sleeping face.

She looked younger when she slept. Almost like she was a child again. I took in her ridiculous red hair sprawled about her head like a raging fire, the makeup that she was wearing, the snake tattoo on her arm. I still recalled the time when her hair was brown and her tanned skin was streaked with dirt from having been outside all day. I recalled the Abby that didn't smoke or drink. The Abby whose name had always been Abigail to our grandparents, until the day she'd left home and decided to have everyone call her Abby. The Abby who would always say shoot when she stubbed her toe instead of shit.

I'd been so focused on my farm and myself these past few years that I hadn't realized just how much our grandparents death had changed my sister. She wasn't a person I really knew anymore. And yet, in some ways, I knew her better than I knew myself.

Had I changed? I didn't smoke or drink or swear that often, but had I changed in some other way? Did Abby see me as a stranger more than she did a sister? Aside from these past few weeks when she had been at the farm, we barely had anything to do with each other. Once in awhile we text or phone each other. Perhaps meet up for a coffee in town. But our visits weren't regular. And every time we met there was something different, something altered about her.

We never spoke about what had happened. About her sudden departure after our grandparents death. I was permitted to speak about Astraea and Billy, but never about the house I lived in or the river where their ashes ran. Maybe both of us were just running from the same thing in different directions. Abby always had been wild compared to me. My grandparents had considered me more of a hermit.

I pondered these things even as I sipped on the energon cube that Ratchet had given me before his holoform had fizzled out. The energon tasted like nothing to me, but even so I mechanically lifted the cube to my lips and drank, my blank eyes fixed on nothing.

The plane touched down about a half hour later, and by then Abby had woken up, groggy from her nap. Ratchet drove down the ramp, out of the artificial lighting and into the sun, and it hit me then that I really was back on the island. I had only been gone for two days and yet it felt as though an entire month had passed.

After letting us out in the main hanger, Ratchet immediately disappeared into the med bay after Prowl. I tried to follow him, but was held back by an apprentice medic named Jolt, who just shook his head sympathetically at me, before hurrying after the CMO. I noticed that a lot of the soldiers were staring at Abby and I, most likely wondering if she too was now a Cybertronian femme.

Thankfully Major Lennox appeared right about then to take Abby to her room, after which I showed her mine. I even joined her for supper and sipped on my cube while she ate a plate of 'mystery meat'—which looked totally disgusting—at a table with Lennox and Epps and a group of other soldiers.

I noticed that by the end of the meal Abby was a lot calmer, laughing at some of the jokes the soldiers made, and even as we walked the halls back to our separate rooms barely blinking at the Autobots who walked past. I hoped that meant that she would fit in here. At the very least, it was a start.