R + R please!
*Disclaimer: I don't own transformers*
~ o ~
The next day was hot and sunny. I stood leaning against Prowl's cruiser as we waited alongside Optimus Prime, Ironhide, and Ratchet, all in their alternate forms. We had been driving for some time in the empty desert, somewhere off the island, and had only just come to a standstill to wait for the newcomers to arrive. I had only learned of the imminent arrival of new Autobots coming to Earth earlier this morning, but of course had immediately wanted to tag along with the retrieval team. Optimus Prime had given me permission after I had asked against the wishes of Prowl and Ratchet, both of whom had thought it best I stayed on base.
Like hell, I thought.
Staying on base day after day, I was starting to get a little stir crazy. The daily training lessons I underwent with Prowl in the mornings and Ironhide sometimes in the day helped, but it still did little to sooth the caged-bird feeling that had arisen in me these last few days. I wasn't a prisoner so it wasn't right I should be kept like one I had told him, besides I had been making some improvements in my training. I may not be a kick-ass fighter yet, but I was confident that I would at least no longer be in the way of the other bots. Not to mention that I really wanted to see just how it was the bots arrived on Earth. I knew a little something about the whole process, having received a data-packet from Ratchet, but as we had flown away from base, I couldn't quite imagine what I would see when we arrived at the so-called destination where the newcomers were supposed to land.
I had been standing outside of Prowl for some time and could feel the hot sun glaring down upon me. Even though Cybertronians didn't actually sweat, my cooling fans had kicked up a few notches since I had been out here from the intense heat. It wasn't enough to actually have much of a negative effect on me, but I was tempted to climb back into Prowl anyway and blast on the AC. I was eyeing the black and white cruiser with more and more interest, seriously considering doing just that, when all of a sudden a roaring sound hit my ears that actually hurt—it was so loud! I leaned over, covering my ears, and wondering what the hell it was exactly, when everything shook violently. There were multiple crashes, and I would have fallen over from the ground trembling so had it not been for a body that appeared seemingly out of thin air behind me and held onto me tightly to prevent me from being flown backwards. I barely had a chance to shake off my shock, when suddenly the shaking stopped, and the presence behind me disappeared only to be replaced with the sound of shifting metal as all the bots surrounding me began to transform.
I yelped, not wanting to be stepped on by Prowl or any of the others, and tried to run only for a white hand to scoop me up. I glared half-heartedly up at Prowl, who just raised an optic-ridge. "You could have warned me!" I burst out, earning a semi-amused look from Optimus. Prowl just stared at me while I looked back at him, now sitting in his hand, brushing a few strands of hair out of my face. His optics left my face after a moment though to watch something behind me, and I turned to discover three craters in the Earth a little ways away from where we were all standing.
I watched in awe as three metal figures transformed out of the metallic shells that had formed the meteors, immediately taking notice of their distinctly feminine figures and much smaller size than even me. Spinning to Prowl, I tapped his hand to get his attention. "Could you let me down, please?" He did so, kneeling down for me, and I stepped off his hand, before transforming up—a little too close it turns out—as Prowl had to quickly take a step backwards to avoid being hit. I grabbed his arm in an effort to stabilize him without thinking about my own stability, which was absent since I had reached out without waiting to get my balance, and instead of helping to steady him all I managed to do was send both of us toppling over onto the ground in a flurry of dust.
I landed with my face inches away from his own, causing both of our optics to widen dramatically. All thought of greeting the new femmes fled my mind as I stared at him, feeling that familiar sensation of warmth and tugging arise in my chest plates once again. Prowl's optics were still wide, and I was starting to worry I might have scrambled his circuits, when all at once I realized that I was still laying on top of him . . . with other bots around.
Yeah.
Immediately we both scrambled away from each other, sort of resembling two schoolyard kids who had just been caught kissing. It was almost comical how fast we each jumped. I didn't think I had it in me to move backwards so fast. But I was even more embarrassed to find that everyone was staring at us in amusement, including the femmes who were watching us curiously, chattering quietly amongst themselves in Neocybex.
Optimus stepped forward then, and began to greet the femmes in their native language. He nodded deeply, before the femme on the right actually rushed a smiling Ironhide, wrapping her arms and legs around him as he caught her tightly. She was his mate, I supposed. I smiled at the sight of them embracing each other, and the two other femmes looked at me curiously, the center femme sauntering over. She moved with a gracefulness that I could only dream of possessing, her body swaying slightly in a startlingly alluring way, before she stood, staring at me.
"What is your designation?" she asked, tilting her head at me.
"I'm Jane." I wasn't sure what else to say, so I just dipped my head in a greeting that she returned with a soft look of curiosity on her faceplates.
"You may call me Arcee. It is a pleasure to meet you, Jane."
I nodded again, murmuring that it was a pleasure to meet her as well, and she left after a moment to go speak to Optimus, who had brought his trailer containing a set of vehicles for the femmes to choose from for alternate forms. I watched as each of the femmes scanned and transformed into motorcycle forms, with Chromia being blue, Arcee being pink, and Flareup being orange.
And so it went, for the next couple of hours, as I rode in Prowl back to the pick up zone. Prowl and I didn't speak on the trip back to base, and I bolted out of him as soon as the plane landed, still feeling mortified over what had happened. I hid in my room, until Abby came along, around four, and I told her my predicament; instead of comforting like I thought she would, she informed me that I was being ridiculous.
"Grow some balls," she said. "How are you ever going to get together with him if you can't even deal with something as simple as accidently falling on the guy?"
I nearly spit out the energon I was drinking.
"Get together? Are you crazy?"
Abby shrugged. "What? You guys are always hanging out."
"Yeah, because he's training me," I said.
"Oh please," she said. "I caught you making goo-goo eyes at him the other day when he was speaking to you in Praxian."
"Only because I love the sound of the language," I said, but that was only half true. I loved Praxian, but more than that, I loved hearing Prowl speak Praxian. The two of us tended to speak Praxian more often than not during our fighting lessons in the early morning. Still, I hadn't thought that my liking of hearing him speaking was so obvious to those around me.
"Just admit it. You like Prowl."
I said nothing. What could I say? No matter what she was just going to say that I liked him. Besides, I supposed that in a way I did like him. He was my guardian, and I certainly considered him a friend, at the very least. But did I love him?
I blinked.
"Actually, I'm glad we have some time alone together. There is something I've been meaning to tell you," Abby said, reeling my attention back onto her.
"Let me guess," I said, smirking. "You and Jesse are dating." But to my surprise, she didn't crack a smile. Instead, she looked startlingly serious. "What is it?"
"I'm leaving."
"Leaving?" I tilted my head in confusion. "Leaving to where?"
"Home," she said, blinking. At my shocked expression, she sighed, sitting down on the berth next my metal frame. "I've already spoken to Optimus about it, and he's agreed to let me return home so long as the Chevy twins come too." She scrunched up her nose. "Lord, help me, having to deal with those two every day."
I was too stunned to laugh. "But, why?"
"I have a business to run, Janie," she said, looking at the water bottle she held in her hands. "I've worked to hard to lose it. Besides, you don't need me here. You've got everything more or less worked out without me being here."
"You know that's not true," I stammered, but she shook her head.
"You don't need me." She took a sip of water, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "And it's not like you won't ever see me again. God, when you make that face it's like someone told your best friend just died." I didn't know what to say. Part of me wanted to beg her to stay—to tell her that I still needed her—that she was all I had left—but I stopped myself. It wasn't fair that she should give up on her hard-earned tattoo shop because of me.
Still, her words 'you don't need me' felt like a slap to the face. How the hell did she know what it was I needed and didn't? Those were the same words she had said to me the day she walked out after our grandparents' death. Yet again I was going to be left alone. A blanket of coldness I hadn't felt since Astraea's death settled over me at the thought.
"I'm heading back tomorrow," Abby said, getting to her feet. She flicked back her fiery hair, before motioning to the floor with her head. "Do you mind helping me down?" she asked. I picked her up gently and then placed my palm on the floor near my feet so she could walk off.
I transformed down then and hugged her before she walked away. "Come say goodbye to me in the morning," she said, before she disappeared into the hallway off to find Jesse.
I stood for a while staring at the closed door, feeling numb. I had lost Astraea, Billy, and now, I was going to lose Abby too. Part of me knew that thinking that was ridiculous, that even though she was leaving the island didn't mean I wasn't going to get to see her anymore, that I would still get to visit and see her then, just as I always had done. But I don't want things to go back to how they were before! Another part of me cried. I liked having my sister around, seeing her everyday, talking and laughing like we had when we were younger.
Tears sprung to my eyes, but I vigorously wiped them away. Instead, I started walking out into the hallway, my mind bent on uncharitable thoughts of my sister. I couldn't believe how furious I was at her for not choosing to stay. I had the palpable urge to punch her in the mouth.
Fuck her, I thought, so mad that I balled my hands into fists.
It was wrong. It was so relentlessly awful that no matter what I did I continued to lose those close to me. I couldn't even hate Abby properly. I couldn't even hate my grandparents for dying and not being here with me. I didn't get to grow up and pull away from them and bitch about them to my sister and confront them about the things I wish they'd done differently and then get older and understand that they'd done the best they could and take them back into my arms again. I didn't get to have my farm and Astraea and Billy and be friends with my sister. My grandparents death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive their every fault at the same that it kept me trapped in the place we'd left off. I was forever cut off, forever an empty bowl that no one could fill, except me, again and again and again.
Fuck her, I chanted as I marched through the hallways, bumping into people as I went, quickened as I was by my rage. I didn't even realize where I was headed until I had stopped in front of Prowl's office. I knocked and the door slid open after only a moment of waiting. Inside, Optimus and Prowl were having a discussion at his desk, but they stopped talking when I walked in. How I was feeling must've showed on my face because both—even Prowl—turned to me immediately.
"Are you well, Jane?" Optimus asked me, concern showing in his optics.
I opened my mouth to answer, but suddenly found that I couldn't speak. It was like the sight of Prowl just drained the anger right out of my body. Seconds ticked by without me saying anything, and Prowl walked around his desk to come stand next to Optimus, leaving the datapad they had been going over on his desk. Confronted as I was by both of them, my throat closed up and I turned and dashed out of the room before either one of them could speak.
I wasn't sure where I was going this time either, I just ran. I fled all the way to the main hanger, where soldiers were pretending to attack Ironhide, and then to the trail that led down to the beach, stopping only once I reached the shoreline. Energon tears were streaming down my face by then, but I ignored them in favour of looking at the waves crashing into shore. I heard footsteps thudding in the sand from behind me and turned to find Prowl walking up to me. I looked away, ashamed to be caught crying, only for a hand on my shoulder to cause me to whip my head up.
"You . . ." He took in my energon-stained face and seemed to pause. "Does this have anything to do with your sister departing tomorrow?"
I shrugged, turning my face to look back at the ocean, but a gentle hand on my chin steered me back to him. I looked up at him in surprise, before the floodgates in my optics fully opened and I started to shake. Without a word he wrapped his arms around me, drawing me close to him as I cried, rubbing my shoulders soothingly. I fell into his embrace without another thought, clutching my wrist against my chest plates as I leaned fully against him.
I'm not sure how long we stood like that, minutes, an hour maybe. But after a while my shaking ceased and I felt myself relax against him.
"She leaving me again," I croaked, weak from crying.
He didn't say anything, just continued to hold me. I didn't mind. It had been a long time since I'd had anyone to vent to. There was no one to listen; Abby wouldn't, she didn't like to hear anything concerning our grandparents.
"Everyone I love always ends up leaving me," I said. "First my grandparents, then Astraea and Billy, and now my sister. I know it's selfish, but for once I just want someone to stay." I blinked away more tears, focusing instead on the steady hum of his spark. "My mother was a drug addict who walked out on us when I was five. The man who fathered me, I never met." I sighed. "I feel like I've lost everything."
"Not everything," Prowl said quietly, and it was then I remembered that I was talking to someone who really had lost everything. Shame washed over me then, and I pulled away a little.
"I'm sorry," I said. I expected him to nod and let me go, but instead he reached out and surprisingly gently wiped one of my tears away with his thumb. I looked up at him to find an oddly soft look in his optics.
"You have nothing to apologize for," he said. He tilted his head then. "Would a walk down the shoreline help calm your systems?" I nodded, figuring he just wanted me off of him, and together we began to stroll leisurely down the beach. I found that it was actually very calming just listening to the waves and breathing in the salty air, and it wasn't long before I started to feel tired. Prowl carried me back the hanger, and through the hallways, depositing me gently on a berth where I quickly dropped into recharge.
It wasn't until later, when I finally awoke; that I realized it was his quarters so I wouldn't have to be alone.
