[AN: This chapter contains reference to past attempted non-con. /AN]

Disclaimers in Part 1

-Sidhe Chronicles-

"Fraggin' excuse for a road!" Ironhide swore as he navigated a narrow, deeply rutted goat trail that clung to a Colorado mountainside, halfway to the sky.

Lennox agreed. "The only places worse than this I've ever seen were in Afghanistan. When Greta said she was off the grid, she wasn't kidding."

"What's the deal with this Greta, Will?" Zain had remained behind in Colorado Springs to help the women pilots arrange for their trip to Portland, so it was just the two of them now.

"Sgt. Greta Morse, Army Corps of Engineers, stationed out of Kabul," Will explained. "Look, Hide, you know I'm proud of my service and Army life suits me—I'd have made a career out of it even if there hadn't been two wars and an alien invasion. But that doesn't mean I think there isn't room for improvement in the Army's treatment of soldiers, because there is. And, as far as women in the service are concerned, there's a hell of a lot of room for improvement.

"It doesn't originate with the Army. You have a lot of these young yahoos coming in who already have a disrespectful attitude toward women, and the military hasn't done a stellar job of training 'em out of it. Every time I'd get a bunch of new guys, I'd have to let 'em know right away that that bullshit wasn't gonna fly on my watch. But that wasn't the way a lot of other officers ran their outfits, and Greta was in one of those units. Man, will you look at that."

Hide looked but saw nothing remarkable. "I ain't a man, Will, so you'll have to explain what's remarkable about it to me."

"How big it is, and how wild."

"Wild" was outside Hide's experience, though he'd set ped on a lot of planets that had yet to know the touch of civilization's hand. He wouldn't have said "wild" in that tone of voice; his would easily have been readable as "underdeveloped." "Big," though, that he could give the panorama that lay before them: it looked like he'd need all day to cross the valley that sprawled out below and beyond their present position, a vast white punctuated only by pine trees. Across the valley the mountains took over again, and climbed toward the sky.

"Yeah," he said. "Big."

Will chalked that one off to the culture gap. "Greta, though...some of us were in a Hummer coming back to our quarters from a staff meeting, when Epps slams on the brakes. This guy stumbles out of this narrow alley right in front of us, bloody, and he's wearing an Army uniform. There's a fight going on, and we don't know what's up. We think, hell, he's into it with the Afghans—so we all jump out of the Hummer to help him out. Only there's him, there's three more of our guys, and there's Greta. Her uniform's ripped, her eye's black, she's been sliced from her ear all the way down to her chin, and she's got a K-bar in one fist that's ready for business.

"The other three guys took off when we dismounted the Hummer. I told Fig to check on the guy who got shoved in the street, and I advance into this narrow street they came out of, trying to calm Greta down. She's got a lot of adrenaline goin', she's got a combat knife, and she was holdin' her own against four other people, members of her own squad, for God's sake. I wasn't sure she realized the situation was under control now and I didn't want one of my guys getting hurt.

"So, I'm talking to her, you know, what's your name, soldier, what's going on here. She's still got her back to the wall, and she's looking all around everywhere, but her eyes are a little less crazy and she's answering my questions.

"These guys had been doing some work on a forward base, and it was Miller time, only there ain't a lot of Miller in Afghanistan."

"Miller time?" said Ironhide.

"Work was over and it was time to have a beer. But Afghanistan is a Muslim country, and Muslims don't drink alcohol. At all. Ever. Its presence in the country is tolerated only so long as it's not sold to Afghans, but American troops are expected to stay drier than a Nazarenes' convention in South Carolina. So they're doin' something indefensible when they tell Greta they found a bar and invite her to go out and have a few brews with them. They're her squad mates so she figures why not, which was indefensible on her side. Well, they planned for a little more than a few beers."

"A lot of beers?" Hide said, puzzled.

Ah for the culture gap. "No. They planned to grope her"—the air in Hide's cabin became thick with puzzlement—"to touch her body without caring whether that was okay with her or not. It wasn't okay, she put up a protest, and they all got kicked out. Once they were out in the street, the guys figured, hey, we got free rein here. Because in Afghanistan, almost nobody will come to the aid of a woman, and anybody who might do that won't mess with American soldiers. In the street, the fight really got started, and that's when we came in.

"So I've got her calming down and all of a sudden Greta jumps me and knocks me into a garbage heap and all hell breaks loose. Some Afghans planned to reason with the infidels; one moron had a gun and he took a shot at me. Greta saved my life, and got shot doing it. She lived, but she lost her arm."

Will Lennox watched some bad memories parade past out Hide's windshield, against a backdrop that might have come from a Christmas card sent three months late. "Once we were fired upon, we pacified the situation pretty quickly. But Hide, the brass was gonna pin the whole thing on Greta and send her home with a dishonorable discharge. She would've lost her VA benefits and everything. Those guys—they didn't get their asses kicked for assaulting a squadmate. Brass was gonna make Greta the scapegoat, probably not only because she lost her arm but because she's a woman. I wasn't going to let that happen, not after she got hurt saving another soldier's life, and especially not if that soldier was me. The thing was, they were trying to cover up the attempted rape by blaming the victim, so I got Morshower involved. He doesn't put up with that crap either. He made them see that if they wanted it to go away, they had to give her an honorable discharge, a medical."

There was a noise like the one that results from throwing a bag of silverware at the wall. "What?" Lennox said.

"Closest translation I've seen in your language is 'assholes.'"

"Can't disagree with you there, brother. But I think you can understand the whole thing left a bad taste in Greta's mouth where the Army is concerned."

"Sure as the Pit would me, too."

"Yeah. So I made a point of keeping in touch. She stayed in rehab for a while, learned to use her prosthesis. Then she came up here and bought some land, built a cabin. She was happy, seemed to be doing all right. But then a few months ago, they found breast cancer. It had already spread. Inoperable."

"Aw, Primus. That's fragged."

"Yeah. But, now this Pretender thing comes up. I don't know if Greta will be interested, but if she is, hell, I think she deserves a shot at it."

"She sounds like she'd be an asset, but if she's got a bad opinion of the military, she might not be interested."

Lennox shrugged. "All we can do is ask. The thing is, S14 is on the civilian side of things. She wouldn't have to re-up."

"Yeah." Ironhide, negotiating something he'd later described to Chromia as "More like a disaster area than a road," hit a particularly juicy bump at ten miles an hour. Lennox hit his restraint belts hard enough to hurt, and Hide muttered another curse for what this pause-for-laughter road was doing to his suspension. "We're almost there," Ironhide said.

"Can't be too soon," Lennox grumbled.

"You said it, brother."

A side road that was nothing more than two dirt tracks covered by deep snow led into a valley with a promise of chimney smoke wafting up through thick pines. They could both smell it; Ironhide caught a glimpse of the source through the trees.

But the road...he stopped. "I'll never make it in alt mode, Will. I'm going to have to walk from here."

Lennox got out, pulled on his parka, and put on his rucksack, then adjusted his rifle to hang from his shoulder and not bang against his leg. Even on the edge of spring, no one with any sense came into the high country without proper equipment.

Maybe especially on the edge of spring, because bad weather now could quickly become "the last big storm of winter." Counting on good weather at this altitude because the calendar said it was the end of March had cost a lot of lives.

And this was Greta... "Make noise on the way in, Hide. This is wild country, and she knows all the Cons aren't dead. We need to announce ourselves."

Ironhide, who understood, grunted.

He broke trail, because he could more easily pick out the slight depressions in the snow that marked the access road beneath. Will followed far enough behind to give his partner plenty of maneuvering room on the uncertain footing.

Every one of Ironhide's ped prints gave him a few steps on nicely packed snow; between them, he trudged through knee-high drifts.

Hide asked, "How the slag does she get in and outta here for her treatments?"

"Snowmobile to a friend's place, then on horseback from there; his place is at a low enough elevation that the trails are safe for horses."

"And she does this after she's had chemo and is feeling really sick."

"Not exactly; you have the treatment at the high point of the cycle. The worst sick days are midway between—and that's when she's up here in the high country by herself. She still has to chop wood and carry water, and everything else that needs to be done."

Ironhide emitted a low whistle of admiration. Humans were small, fragile, short-lived creatures—but he knew when it came to sheer cussedness, they could be as tough as any Cybertronian alive. This Greta, though, she sounded tougher than both the Big Twins put together, and they'd survived enslavement in the gladiator pits of Kaon.

He couldn't wait to see her argue with Ratchet, if it all fell out that way.

It was a long slog downhill to the ranch—they were going to have to climb back out. Just slaggin' lovely. "Talk about the aft end of nowhere!"

"This is God's country, all right."

Ironhide pushed a tree branch out of his way, then let it go once it was behind him. "God's country? What's your Deity got to do with it?"

A Cybertronian-sized pile of snow fell off the limb and inundated Will. As he did an ungraceful little dance to get it out of his coat before it melted, he explained, "God created it, God forgot it, and God damn it!"

Ironhide's booming laughter echoed across the mountainside.

The last hundred yards were easier: Greta had blazed a snowmobile trail. Lennox knew it looped down the valley toward a friend's distant spread, where she kept her horse in the wintertime.

There was a paddock surrounded by a wooden fence, a barn, and beyond that, a small, neat cabin with fragrant smoke rising from a stove pipe. There was a large stump near a pile of firewood, not too far from the cabin, not so close as to encourage pests to move from the wood pile to the warm cabin. Rope lines at about waist height, their wooden props visible only where the ever-present wind had scoured them free of snow, ran from the cabin door to the woodpile and the well, marking out a tramped path that would disappear when whiteout conditions obtained.

Only two items would have been out of place in the 1800s: the shiny snowmobile next to the porch, and a satellite dish, carefully placed so that mountains and trees did not obscure its view of the bird high above: Greta liked her football and her internet.

Ironhide's first sight of Greta Morse was on the wrong end of her rifle sights: she'd heard him coming. It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that some surviving 'Con had tracked her down out here; it wasn't unknown that she and Will were friends, and that could very well make her a target even though she had never served in NEST. She kept a mag of sabot rounds for just that eventuality, though she never really expected to need them.

Her jaw dropped as she recognized Lennox.

Laughing, she put her rifle back inside the door and shouted, "Come on up, coffee's on! What the hell are you doin' all the way out here this time of year?"

"Got somethin' important to talk to you about!"

"Well, come on in and get warm first. Um, Ironhide, I'm sorry, but I don't know what I could offer you."

"Room in your barn to get out of the wind, ma'am?"

Greta grinned. "Sure thing." In these parts, a lady expected a gentleman to call her ma'am. He'd gone up several notches in Greta's estimation by taking the time to learn that, and having the class to put it into practice.

She shrugged into her own coat, unlocked the barn, and opened the large sliding door for him to transform and roll inside.

It was neat as a pin. With Greta's mare living elsewhere for the time being the stall was squeaky clean, and the horse smell very faint. A workbench and some storage shelves along the other side of the barn held a nice assortment of tools, well maintained and ready to be put to use.

Out of an ice-laden wind, Ironhide could enjoy the insulating airspace under his plating. The barn would trap his radiated heat as well, and warm up nicely in a short time. Like his quarters on the Lennox farm back in Maryland, it was solidly built of wood, a natural insulator. Contented, he was dozing by the time Greta shut the door on him; she didn't lock it.

If a thief happened along and tried to steal Ironhide, she'd tell them where best to lose the body so that scavengers got most of it.

Lennox followed Greta back to the cabin where, just as she had said, coffee was steaming atop the cabin's pot-bellied stove. A twin bed near that warmth was neatly made up with an army blanket and a colorful quilt; windows on three sides sported heavy curtains to insulate them.

One set was now open to admit light, and Lennox could see the solar panels on the roof of a small shed out back, which provided enough power for her laptop and a few small appliances arranged on a shelf over the dry-sink countertop.

Prep space was pretty minimal, because everything Greta ate was canned, powdered, or dried. He thought she probably had a metal meat locker somewhere outside for the fruits of her hunting, with its contents very well wrapped so the scent didn't attract animals. She likely made a lot of jerky.

What she did not have was running water. A large bucket with a dipper rested on a stand near the dry sink, and another waited below to catch the used water.

Only Greta's bald head gave any obvious sign of her status as cancer patient. Will didn't see that until she pulled off her winter cap and hung it on a peg with her coat—heavy, no-nonsense real sheepskin, wool-side-in.

But, once the coat was off, Lennox could see other signs of her illness as well. For one thing, she had lost forty pounds since the last time he had seen her. Always rangy and rawboned, she was left razor thin, as though the illness had burned away everything extraneous and left only steel behind. Her skin was papery thin, like a very old person's, and peppered here and there with small bruises.

Lined up on her night stand like soldiers on parade, an impressive collection of prescription bottles marched in formation to the wall: the dead giveaway that she was fighting for her life. Each bore an array of stickers detailing how it was and was not to be taken. With food, on an empty stomach, not on an empty stomach...do not take with alcohol...

Most people would have been more distracted than Will was by Greta's prosthesis; he noted only that it made a small noise of servos, sensors, and tiny motors.

In the city, with urban background noise, it would have been notable only for its appearance. Greta had chosen it for utility, and its varied metal digits were practical for everyday use on a high country ranch, making no attempt to look like fingers. The forearm portion was covered by a heavy flannel shirt, and only those metal digits were visible.

One side of her shirt hung loose. Out here in the middle of nowhere, someone as comfortable in her own skin as Greta Morse did not bother with that prosthesis.

She poured two cups of coffee and set out the sugar bowl. "You take cream? I have some of the powdered stuff."

"No, thanks, black's fine," Lennox said. "After all that work gettin' here, though, I'll take some sugar."

She dropped a cozy over the coffee pot to keep it warm, and set a pot of beans which had been soaking overnight on the stove in its stead. When the beans were done, she would make corn cakes to go with them in a cast iron skillet. There was no way to bake.

Lennox thought that Sarah and Annabelle would have loved the simple, natural life that Greta had made here for herself: fishing and tending her garden in the warm weather, hunting when it was cooler, mending and reading by the fire when the snow flew. It was timeless inside this little cabin; Greta lived a life that had not changed in its rhythms for centuries.

"Great place you have here."

"Thanks. When I bought it, the barn and that shed out back were all that was here. The old house burnt down a long time ago. I've got some friends down the valley who helped me clear the site and put up the cabin; we cut the timber for it here on the property. I finished the inside and did everything else myself."

"Reminds me of my family's old home place. It's a farm on the Maryland shore. Big old barn like that, and you can sit on the porch and watch the fishing boats sail by. There's nothing that peaceful in the city."

"Yeah. I turned out the lantern and sat up late last night watching the northern lights. They're amazing up here. We saw them when I was growing up in Denver, but they were nothing like they are here. Too much light in the city." Greta sipped her coffee. "I don't mean to be rude, but my curiosity is getting the best of me. What brings you up here this time of year—you and Ironhide?"

"I have something to talk to you about, but you need to sign a non-disclosure form first."

She turned serious. "Well, before I do that, what are you able to tell me, Will?"

"There's a way you can beat the cancer, outright, if it doesn't kill you cleanly in making the attempt."

She snorted. "That's better'n what I got ahead of me, that's for sure. But a cure? Is that what you're talking about?"

"Leaving it totally behind, zero chance of it returning, yeah. But I really can't tell you anything else until you sign the form."

"This is just an NDF, right? I'm not agreeing to anything else?"

"That's right. It's entirely your choice what to do with the information, you just can't talk about it with anyone."

"OK. I don't exactly have neighbors over the back fence to gossip with!"

Lennox laughed and got up to get a manila envelope out of his inside coat pocket. Greta shook the form out onto the table. She read through it, then signed and dated where Lennox indicated.

He explained first what a Pretender was, then told her about S14. She listened to his narrative without question or comment, then asked several pertinent questions about the process and what life was like as a Cybertronian. Lennox got out his cell phone and pinged Ironhide, setting the phone on the table where its camera had a view of both of them. He let Ironhide field most of the questions.

Pretenders were just small Cybertronians, after all, and humans already had "small" down. Hide was best prepared to answer questions about the "Cybertronian" part.

"Hide, we're going to eat, but I'd like to leave the phone on," a very thoughtful Greta said, and started the corn cakes. Will got out two bowls and spoons without being asked, and ladled out beans, rich with pork and onions. She had more questions, good insightful ones, and asked them as she minded the corn cakes.

Once they were finished, she served them. She pulled her own corn cake into bite size pieces and added them to the bowl, actions that Lennox could only describe as mindful. She was entirely present in the moment.

To his knowledge, Greta was not a witch, but he associated that presence, that awareness of the significance of living this moment, with his sister, and with his sister-by-choice, one Diarwen ni Gilthanel. Maybe he should have simply associated it with wise ones, no matter where they came from.

Greta put down her spoon. "Will, Ironhide, this is all a little overwhelming. You're asking me to give up everything I know about being who I am, but cancer's going to take all that anyhow, and you're offering me a chance to live, not be consigned to a horrible suffering death. I ought to be asking you where I sign up. It's probably stupid to hesitate." She hesitated, this big, tough woman who had successfully held off four combat-trained soldiers: men she had mistakenly accepted as comrades. "But," she said softly, "when this is all over, will I still be me?"

Will said, "Yeah, Greta, I'm pretty sure you will. I mean, nobody gets close to buying the farm without coming away from it changed somehow. You see what's important and what isn't pretty sharply. But the first guy who did this, Dr. Pierpoint, did it by accident. He said when he woke up he didn't even realize he'd transitioned until he saw his human body lying there."

She grinned in spite of herself; she could imagine the hoohaw that created. "You've always been straight with me, Will. The people who've done this, do they regret it?"

"If any of them have regrets, I don't have any evidence of it. They're like a bunch of kids with new toys."

Ironhide said, "I haven't seen any signs of regret either. Some of them were elders before they transitioned. They still have that mindset, y'know, bein' more careful and thoughtful than younglings usually are, but when they're off duty? A lot of the times they're like Cybertronians who just got their adult upgrades all over again.

"We've seen that before, because this isn't a new thing for us. Every so often—it's a long time for humans, thousands of your years—we wear out a frame and have to get a new one. After a reformat, we act just like they do. You see, after you go through an aging cycle once, you appreciate physical youth more and enjoy it while it lasts."

Will found himself hoping he'd live long enough to see that happen for his brother. Ironhide on a joyful tear? Who'd willingly miss that? Ratchet had said due to the cumulative damage from the war Hide was overdue, but a reformat depended on recovering the ability to build him a new frame.

Greta said thoughtfully, "We have a legend of the fountain of youth. It's supposedly a spring somewhere in Florida. If you drink from it, it makes you young all over again. That's what this sounds like."

Will nodded. "The only thing that will change is your body. From everything we can tell, whatever makes you you turns into a Cybertronian spark, and uses a processor just like we do a brain. It won't change you any more than using your prosthetic does."

"Hmm. I see what you mean." She scooped up a spoonful of beans and a bite of cornbread. "I need to think. Are you going to stay the night? You should, that mountain road is dangerous after dark, and I think it would be even for Ironhide."

"If I can camp in the barn with him, sure."

He was a married man, and she clearly had no guest accommodations in the cabin. He had cold weather camping gear in Ironhide's subspace, and if it got really bad, he had Ironhide's passenger space.

"No problem. I'll give you an answer first thing in the morning."

Lennox thought Greta probably wasn't planning on getting much sleep that night.

He offered to chop wood and get water, and Greta accepted gratefully. While he was outside, she celebrated the occasion by cooking up a dessert of dehydrated apples, raisins, oatmeal, candied ginger, and cinnamon. It was delicious, as well as nicely filling, and warming after hard work in sharp, cold air, performed at an elevation several thousand feet higher than Lennox was accustomed to.

They finished their coffee while they watched the stars come out, talking of inconsequential things, simply two soldiers passing the time.

Lennox surprised himself by falling asleep mid-sentence as soon as he zipped himself into the sleeping bag, and he slept so soundly he didn't hear Hide snort at this organic behavior.

The next morning, he discovered the use of the small shed out back when he got up to use the other small structure out back, and saw Greta dashing from the shed to the cabin barefoot, one arm of her bathrobe flapping behind her, with a towel draped over her head. "Is that a bath house?"

"Yes, and sauna! Help yourself!" The cabin door banged behind her; she wasn't staying out there in the snow any longer than absolutely necessary.

Will replenished the fire, and ducked outside to get more water for washing and steam. While the sauna reheated, he washed off in a basin, then dumped a ladle of water on the hot stones and stretched out on the bench. Heaven!

When he got too hot, he grabbed a towel for modesty and dived into a patch of fresh snow, then ducked back inside the sauna. The second time he repeated this ritual, Ironhide demanded, "Will, what the frag are you doing?"

He laughed and shouted, "Google 'sauna!'"

Ironhide established a satellite connection to do so, and decided that a conclusion he drew long ago had been right all along: organics were glitched.

Will dressed and made the dash from the sauna to the cabin, where his breakfast was waiting.

Greta had finished some minor maintenance on her prosthesis, and was sitting on the bed with her back to the door as she finished buttoning her shirt, with a crocheted shawl bundled around her as much for warmth as for modesty. Will sat with his back to that side of the cabin and dug in.

After the breakfast things were cleaned up, they went outside to talk. Ironhide let them in his cab and rolled out into a sunny patch beyond the teeth of the gnawing wind, where he could make some energon.

Greta said, "I've been thinking, and I'd be an idiot not to at least go to Portland and check it out, talk to some of the Pretenders if I can. I don't know, I keep going back and forth between everything I'd be losing and everything I stand to gain. I mean, I won't eat the same food. I won't be able to ride any more because I'll be too heavy to sit a horse, unless I buy myself a Percheron. From your reaction, Ironhide, I doubt saunas will be that enjoyable."

The weaponsmaster replied, "No, but we do have washracks, and they're not strictly to get the dirt off. Also we don't only drink energon straight from a cube, though that's where most of our energy comes from. There are things like oil cakes and rust sticks that are more like what you'd call food, too, and we put different flavorings in our energon. Sometimes those are things we need to consume, but more of 'em just give it a taste that we like.

"Different isn't necessarily worse. Since I've never been human I just have to extrapolate from what the humans I know well have told me about what's like to be a human. I think the other Pretenders will be able to tell you more about what replaces human things, for them anyway, but not all the Pretenders are the same, just like not all other Cybertronians are the same. I think if you keep a few open processor threads, you'll discover on your own what you like. What I can tell you is, I didn't get to know any Pretenders until after they'd already come to terms with their transition. And they all have. When I'm around them their fields are what you'd expect a bot's fields to be like. I don't see why you wouldn't get along as well as they have."

Somehow, Lennox knew that Greta had made her decision. But he chose his words carefully so as not to push her if he was wrong: "What kind of help do you need to get your stuff together and close this place up for a trip to Portland?"

She turned her thin face away from her beloved mountains. "Well, I've got the horse at my friend's place, but he won't have a problem boarding her long term, or maybe he'll be interested in buying her; have to see. I'll need to stop at his place and pay him for her board. I'll take the canned stuff that would freeze, and see if he wants the rest of the food I have here, since I won't be needing it. I'll be taking my tools and my computer with me, so I need to pack those up, and the snowmobile needs to be put in storage."

Ironhide said, "You mean summerize it and lock it in the barn? I can do that while you and Will pack up the stuff you're taking with you."

"Yeah, there's not too much to it. Everything you'll need is on the shelf above my workbench in there. Grab a piece of steel wool and put it in the tailpipe, to keep the mice from making a nest in there."

Ironhide cringed. He didn't want to wake up to find a mouse nest in one of his stacks or anywhere else for that matter. He immediately set a subroutine to work designing a minor transformation to screen such gaps in his plating while he recharged.

Will said to Greta, "Separate the stuff you'll take to Portland and the stuff you might want to have stored for you at the Mission City base."

"OK. I guess a lot of it can stay here; I have some friends who can use the cabin if they want to and they'll need things while they're here."

The three of them got to work. When Ironhide finished with the snowmobile, he split the rest of the firewood and added it to the stack, ready for use by anyone who might happen upon the cabin in an emergency.

By then, Will and Greta were finished in the cabin. Greta went into the barn to pack up her tools while Will raked the coals out of the sauna heater and made sure they were thoroughly extinguished.

That was the last task they had to perform to be ready to leave.

Greta took a final look around her tiny living space to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything, and stood on the porch for a long moment, taking in the last view of her beloved mountains.

Ironhide committed the video file to memory, and sent it to her email.

Greta picked up the backpack containing all her necessities, including a bag of meds that would halfway kill her to kill her cancer, and opened Ironhide's passenger door: the portal to her new life.

End Part 25