Alexis didn't know where she was. Nor, as her fingers went through her hair, finding it longer than usual, exactly how much time had passed.

She felt as if she had been possessed with her body borrowed and used as she was forced to move. Sitting there, eyes wandering up to the sky, patches came in. Alexis remembered leaving the base. Remembered seeing Starscream, touching, feeling and tasting Starscream only for him to morph into Barricade. He still appeared as the Seeker, but it had been as if she could see through a layer of him and see deeper as the distortion cleared long enough for Alexis to act.

That had obviously been some sort of dream.

She remembered riding and riding some more, feeling hunger and not caring, meeting new people and bypassing them as quickly as possible. She remembered Thundercracker, although she didn't know why. And remembered sleeping in strange places, her dreams mixing with what could have been reality, both intermingling to the point that she couldn't tell either apart.

Starscream was dead.

That thought crashed into Alexis' head like a freight train, thundering inside her skull as her body trembled. Shifting and pushing her body backwards, she leaned against the motorcycle. Alexis had the vague impression that she and the vehicle had been companions for some time. Mikaela was the one that had picked out the thing and reconfigured it. The bike didn't need gas, hardly needed any maintenance, and as Sam said, was wickedly fast.

Sitting against it and feeling the rubber of the tires against her callused fingers, she found she was no longer frightened by the thing. Knowing whether she remembered or not, that she had broken the thing in.

Starscream was dead.

The words were turning into a mantra while cutting in-between her thoughts as she tried to figure out exactly what was happening. Every time she heard the three words; her heart would quake, and her eyes dim as the air crashed through her lungs.

Forcing herself through the fuzz, Alexis stood awkwardly to her feet. Sitting down on the bike, she slid her hands over the interface screen, information splashed by.

She had been gone for over two months. So many miles traveled; state lines crossed, and none of it remembered. Her weapon was on her wrist. The acumentor snugly attached, neither had been used though. Alexis was frightened. And finding out where she was nor seeing how far she had traveled alleviated any of the tension.

Preparing to open a communications line, her actions were stalled. Life around her suddenly spilled into her mind when her brain relayed that she was not alone.

She had been around enough Autobots and Decepticons to know that each had their own unique signal structure, and when she realized that she was surrounded, right smack in the middle of dozen upon dozen Decepticons, the fear grew.

Just where did she lead herself to?


In the middle of a Decepticon stronghold, that's where. Alexis felt as if she was suffocating by the sheer numbers. They were here and there, to the right and left. Somehow, she had navigated right into the middle and then snapped back into consciousness, left with no data except where she was and how much time had gone by, neither which were helpful.

Breathing in and exhaling, Alexis drummed out the Decepticon's presence with her own thoughts. More memories flowed through. She was starting to believe that Thundercracker had not been her imagination. That the conversation she had with Prowl did take place. That Mikaela, her family, Sam and so many others really did try to contact her, and that she did turn off her communication line, leaving herself vulnerable and alone.

That action was foolish and stupid. However, she was starting to understand why she did such a thing. The fear came back into play, building upon what was already there as it rebounded and scratched up her flesh. There was a revelation as well, an intuition that was not exactly a thought but an inclination.

Her journey wasn't over. And now conscious and aware it was up to her to finish it. But she felt weak, pathetic really. And exposed and confused and suffering as if Starscream just left.

Alexis wanted to scream and to cry, to ask and beg the heavens above why it was happening to her, and why she had to resume. Why was she even alive? Why was she breathing? Her heart was constrained within her chest, a rapid pumping inside her ears leaving her swaying back and forth as she had the odd sensation that she was dying. That one more breath, maybe two, and that tight feeling inside her would break and fall away, taking her along with it.

But blinking rapidly, the feeling remained. She couldn't help but feel the longer she stayed where she was the greater her chances were for being found. And yet she couldn't move. Alexis' emotions were disabling her motor functions, the tension in her spine traveling into her legs making them heavy and non-functioning.

She sought for help and prayed for clarity, but it only got worse. Closing her eyes and then slowly pinching them back open, the bright world she was in turned black while dots played across her vision. Moving her hands forward, Alexis grabbed tightly onto the bike's handles.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Again. Repeat.

Alexis found she wanted to dive straight forward into the blackness, anything to take away the distorted fuzziness that soaked her mind and body.

By the time she could see again, Alexis was lying on her back and uncomfortably splayed along scratchy grass. Above her were trees with tall branches that swayed back and forth. The leaves blew softly in the wind around her; a couple of stray ones broke loose and fell down.

Alexis stayed where she was for hours. She willed herself to stop thinking about Starscream, but she couldn't. Her brain was on repeat and nothing, not anything she tried to think of would circumvent the ache. Except for an undefined goal that made her finally get up and eat a little as she waited for night to fall.


Again, she felt pathetic. The fear was still around Alexis as if a cloak. It dispelled in small intervals as she concluded that she didn't really care if she survived what was to come. So that was what had her walking through the trees and walking through and around a path that seemed embedded in her head.

Alexis expected the Decepticons to be aware of her presence a lot sooner. And when she entered the camp and walked by a bunch of dirty, rather hungry and forlorn looking humans that stopped what they were busily doing as she freely walked into the compound, she had a moment of panic and a rush of desperation.

Loud, clamoring voices began. The Decepticons downed her and tried to get her weapon off. Giving up, Alexis found herself caged. An irrational smile wavered on her lips as she watched the world as it rocked slowly by. The one carrying her shouted orders. A path cleared; Alexis was taken away.


Alexis never considered herself a lonely person. Perhaps because she was used to depending on herself. Being an only child she focused on her grades and not social events. As technology increased she had found she didn't even have to go to school, most of her college courses taken right at home on her computer. Not that that lasted long, for a couple of months later Diana had been killed and that changed everything.

That was the first time she became aware of what being lonely truly was. But even that tragedy could not compare to how she felt when Starscream had been killed. Only days they had been bonded, and even with the Seeker diluting their connection near the end, it was all-encompassing. Taking what were two and remolding it into an intimacy that left her with more than Alexis could have ever been on her own.

But now with Starscream gone, in the darkest corner of her thoughts she almost wished they never met. For how was anyone supposed to survive such a separation? Feeling all that he was, and all that she could be, seeing and feeling their futures, hopes and ambitions combined, only for everything to be ripped away with the emptiness of her own mind leaving her breathless.

Had they become too close? Was the connection she had with the Seeker not allowed? Why was she allowed to fall in love and to feel loved only to be left abandoned and broken? Why Starscream? Why him? And how was she to keep going? And what was keeping her here? Was life nothing more than suffering and surviving? Wasn't she promised more?

Nothing, she had nothing. Her parents would survive without her. Mikaela, Sam and Julia would make it. And Bumblebee, well, they had been drifting apart since Starscream returned. He would grieve perhaps, but in the end, he would see she was not worth all that he thought. Bee did have the strange ability of building her up as more than she was.

Satisfied with her morose thoughts, she turned her attention to the Cybertronian that was holding her, but then found she didn't really care. Still lying down, Alexis kept her view upwards. She was obviously being taken somewhere in particular. The closer they came to their destination, the more unusual she felt. Yet Alexis wasn't frightened anymore, not like she had been, and even as she felt deplorable for accepting the situation she was in, apathy hugged her tight.

It was better not to feel, better not to know and better not to care.

But why, when they came to a stop, the mech swiping his hand forward as a door slid open, did her heart jump, pounding awake as she found the strength to sit up? After entering the building, the 'Con lifted the cage up high. Alexis' view changed.

"We caught a human trespasser, sir," he informed someone.

The small enclosure she was in swayed dangerously back and forth, her body rolled along with it while bruises formed easily. She didn't even notice when it finally stilled, her focus was elsewhere. The Decepticon's words were directed at a chair that was turned away from them.

"Commander?"

"I heard you!" a voice rasped with impatience.

Alexis' heart sped up and pumped so hard that she felt it rippling underneath her hands that were now molded tightly against the cage's bars.

"You dare interrupt what I was doing to tell me such a thing? Just send it to the mines with the rest of the human filth."

The mech holding Alexis cautiously continued, "Actually, sir this one has a reward out for it."

"Again, why should this be a concern of mine?" The commander swiveled his chair around.

Could the world stop? Could reality freeze into one frame and stay there? Alexis couldn't breath and couldn't comprehend, couldn't no matter what her eyes were telling her, nor her ears, nor her heart, believe who was sitting there.

But it was Starscream and was who she had been traveling to get to. She now knew it and felt it and was starting to believe. She should have known. It wasn't the first time that she was so blindly driven, just not for such a long period of time.

"This creature is worth something? A human? Send it to the mines until I figure out what to do with it," the Seeker ordered.

The mech warned Starscream, "This creature is weak, sir. Sending it to the mines will probably kill it."

"Even better," was the Seeker's disinterested reply.

And just like that, Alexis was taken away. Her efforts dwindled and fizzled out, crossing over the lines of the worthless.

Starscream didn't know who she was.