A/N: Wow. This is my longest chapter yet! I wanted to get this out by Valentine's day as a special gift for everyone that has read, reviewed, and made this story a favorite. Alas, I fell short of that. Still, this is my thank you for staying with me during all the crazy twists and turns, and it's a special gift to all the Lydia/Ratchet fans out there that wanted to see a bit more of them in that special place. :D That being said... WARNING NOW: This chapter almost had me pushing the rating to M. For those that want to skip that bit of Fluff, head to the second part of this chapter. The second and third parts have been written in such a way as to make sense without reading the first section of this chapter. This is NOT scary human-on-mech, so don't worry. You will see what I mean when/if you read. Sorry if this offends anyone. I felt it important to place a warning before continuing. :)
For everyone else, this is my Thank You for the support, reviews and private messages that help make this story what it is. I hope you enjoy it. :D
A special shout out goes to Hummergrey and Razorgaze for their hard work beta'ing the craziness that I call my writing. They both have amazing fics that are linked in my profile page. Please go and read and enjoy as much as I do. These stories are so well worth the read! Spark Call was created by Hummergrey and used with her permission. The write-up in detail can be found on her profile page.
As promised, the next five chapters of music. Almost caught up!
Chapter 26: Arrival Part 2
Come Undone - Duran Duran
Enjoy the Silence - Depeche Mode
Harder to Breathe - Maroon 5
Chapter 27: Friendship
Birdhouse in your Soul - They Might be Giants
Chapter 28: Friendship Part 2
Waiting (Save your Life) - Omnisoul
I Feel Lucky - Mary Chapin Carpenter
Chapter 29: Conversation Part 2
Beauty from Pain - Superchick
Passive - A Perfect Circle
The Game - Distrubed
Chapter 30: Consequences
Roadside - Rise Against
Walking in My Shoes - Finger Eleven
Disclaimer: As always, I do not own Transformers or the music listed above. This is purely for fun. Please do not sue.
Lydia was dreaming again. She had to be.
Somewhere between that last scan and the news that in a short time they had an appointment with Optimus Prime, she must have nodded off. Her energy levels still fluctuated every so often, her body just shy of fully recovered after the many surgeries it took to save her life. Now there was a whole new round of scans and tests permeating her body. It took a lot out of her, more so than she was willing to let on. Not to mention that a small fraction of her was certain that her spark drew on her own life energy in order to keep going, further adding to the bouts of fatigue.
Not that she could really blame the thing. It's wasn't like she had a fresh supply of energon to feed it all the time. And trying to ingest the acidly liquid herself was definitely out of the question. It would kill her faster than she could blink and probably hurt more than she could imagine. She was only human after all…
… which was why she knew this had to be a dream.
Lydia stared down at her metal fingers, gazing with awe at the delicate strength in their design. They were not squared off as her mate's, and weren't held together with rivets and bearings like the other Autobots. On the contrary, they were slender and tapered at the tip, the metal flexing like a mesh in the joint locations instead of turning, giving her a freedom of movement that she never would have believed possible otherwise.
Her optics—still jade green if the tinge of color around her vision was any indication—traveled from her finger digits down her silvery palms and wrists, her arm twisting as she admired the dark, dark blue of her armor. The little flecks of silver in her paint weren't really flecks of material, she noted with a thrill of delight. They were tiny, almost microscopic lights that twinkled here and there. Like stars.
Her hands, once visibly inspected, joined in on the exploration of her frame, sliding down her shapely chest armor to her slender waist plates, continuing to curve down over ample hip coverings. The sensations she could feel through her armor was also a pleasure to her processor. She could actually feel through it, and not like a human could feel through the clothing they wore. No, this was more like the moment the pieces attached to her protoframe, a thousand million sensors came online.
It was literally like the armor was a part of her. Any damage to it would register like damage on organic tissue. And somehow she knew the moment she detached the armor, those sensations would fade. She had often wondered why the mechs and femmes did not share armor pieces, or that discarded materials weren't scavenged from fallen enemies. Now she knew. Each armor piece bonded to the mech or femme in question and would only respond to his or her specific sensor connections. Elaborate and painstaking work would be needed in order to modify the armor to work with another Cybertronian.
No wonder Sunstreaker fussed so much over his parts.
She felt a smile curve on her lip plates as she slid off the medical berth. "You chose a great dream-form for me, beloved."
Ratchet stood at the nearest science station, his back to her. She could make out the tiny sounds as he transformed each finger into whatever tool he needed in order to complete his work. "I didn't choose it, femme of mine," He remarked casually without turning around. "You did."
"I did?" Lydia laughed, crossing the distance between them and resting her head against his back shoulder plates. "Trust me, Grumpy, while I have a great imagination, it's no where near this good. I couldn't have come up with this on my own."
He paused for a second, leaning his head back and to the side until his helm brushed hers. She felt most of the tension drain from his frame, felt the contentment echoing from his spark as he did. Her spark hummed in perfect synchronization with his, turning what was such a simple gesture of touching helm to helm into something much more intimate and powerful. It was enough to send tiny rivulets of tingly sparks throughout her systems, setting her parts ablaze with warmth, desire, and love.
"Maybe you had help," he whispered, his lip plates ghosting over her helm, setting her already heated systems into overdrive.
"From you?" she purred, wrapping her arms around his waist.
"From your spark."
That caused her to blink her optic guards in surprise, her intake systems venting air. "How would it know what you want?"
Ratchet chuckled, his lip plates placing one more kiss on her helm before he turned back to his work. "Not what I want, femme of mine, but what you want."
"Okay, how would it know what I want?"
"Come and have a look for yourself."
A small shudder of dread made its way up her spinal support structure, chasing away some of the eager warmth. Her arms instinctively wrapped around him tighter. Suddenly, she didn't want to see what he was working on in that science station. Couldn't she just live the rest of her life in this moment? It was safe here, warm here, and reminded her strangely enough of the golden place in which they were mated.
"I-I don't want to," she admitted, biting her lower lip plate before tucking herself in closer to him. "I have a much better idea. Why don't you take a break?"
Her hands slipped across his chest armor as she had once seen Chromia do to Ironhide, finding a gap in his armor and running her finger across and down that gap. Silently, she prayed that what she had seen in that brief moment before she had literally backed out of the break room at all speed wasn't just specific to Ironhide. She felt him jolt in surprise, the bond between them letting her know that her fears were unfounded. She had located a sensitive spot, the wiring below a neural connection… and that it wasn't a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. A smile replaced her look of fear, listening as his intake valves pulled in great amounts of air.
"Femme, you know not what you do," his half-whispered/half-moaned.
"Then teach me," she whispered back, her desire flowing to him through their bond. Her finger found that sensitive bit of circuitry again and pressed, eliciting the same response. "Your work will keep until later. If this is our moment, let it be ours."
His hands reached up to cup her own, one wrapping around her wrist and carefully removing her touch. Her smile turned into a pout, momentarily believing he was going to turn her down, and then turned into something else entirely at the look in his optics. There were no words for what she saw, only that it left her feeling weak and dizzy and utterly alive at the same time.
Ratchet pulled her close, hands traveling up her arms with an aching slowness that set fire to her limbs in its wake. She trembled, quaked down to her core by the time his hands reached her face, cupping it between them. And when his mouth plates touched hers, all thoughts in her processors fled. Her spark had become a giant ball of pulsating need, and the armor she had so delighted in moments ago felt constrictive and heavy and… and just in the way.
She could feel him chuckling through their bond just as she was certain he could feel her eagerness to interface with him.
"Slowly, light of my spark. Slowly," he whispered, thumbs delicately tracing the lines of her cheek plates. "We have all the time in the universe."
Her hands rested on his shoulder armor, fingers aching to remove it from him. And when his hands slipped back to her waist and suddenly pulled her in tight against him, she thought she was going to jump right out of her armor and devour him whole. She couldn't form the words to call him a tease, couldn't find the processor space to make some sarcastic remark that she knew would delight and enflame him all the more. Every circuit and subroutine she possessed was focused on not loosing control.
Those amazing hands, the hands that saved countless lives on countless worlds, that could deal both life and death on and off the battlefield, hoisted her up until her legs were wrapped around his waist. Only then, with only the metal of their armor separating their sparks from one another, did he carry her towards the nearest medical berth. It took forever and not long enough for him to lay her down, for his massive frame to brace above hers. And then he let her explore, optics dimming and body arching here and there when she found a particularly sensitive spot.
Her own optics filled with wonder as piece by piece, his protoform was revealed to her. So much strength and power, she mused, rising up to let her mouth touch what her fingers were too busy elsewhere to experience. He was pure mech, strong enough to fill any warrior position if he desired, and yet he chose medicine, chose to let others see him as a weaker in order to serve the greater good of his race. He chose to be reserve in his actions, chose to serve instead of lead or fight.
And, in that moment, he chose to give all that power and strength into her hands. He could offline her in less than a blink of an optic, or take what he wanted from her regardless of her feelings. But that wasn't his nature, wasn't why he wanted to be with her.
"I love you," she whispered aloud, wanting to hear the words as much as feel them as she spoke. "I love you so much that it scares me sometimes."
His optics burned so brightly they was almost hard to look at. "And I you. So much so that it scares me. But I am willing to face that fear every nano-klik as long as you want me."
"Forever!" she whispered fiercely.
In a way she could never relate to another human, she felt her chest plating starting to part, saw the brightness of his optics only eclipsed by the radiance of his spark as his did the same. The angry spark she knew, that she fought with constantly, transformed into something else entirely in that moment. It softened and reached for the love it needed, the love they needed to exist… and then she saw only blindingly hot light as their sparks merged.
They were one thought.
They were one life.
They were one existence.
And then pleasure beyond imagining washed away all other sensations.
~*~*~*~*~*~
It was dim in the med bay when she onlined her optics again, the only light given off by various pieces of medical equipment powered down to standby mode. She tried not to frown, confusion twisting through her circuits. Shouldn't she have woken up to reality by now? Not that she wanted leave this place at all, but it wasn't the truth of her existence. She wasn't an Autobot and this wasn't her true form.
She was human… wasn't she?
And why did she suddenly find it hard to answer that question? Her processors must be fogged, that was it. She'd heard that after an overload as intense as theirs had been, it was expected to have some systems slower to come online than others. As a consequence, she pushed that question aside.
Lydia let her systems take their time to climb back to online status, doing her best not to alert the mech curled up beside her. Ratchet lay in deep recharge, one arm wrapped around her waist, holding her against him. Even in all the confusion, she found herself sparing a moment to look on him with wonder. There was still a slight smile to the set of his mouth plates even as he lay in rest, an aura of contented peace emanating from his being.
That smile was her fault, and she gleefully took the blame for it. Just to see him at peace, to watch vorns upon vorns of battle stress fade from him for just a joor. He looked younger somehow, like he was truly showing his age. Her fingertips traced gently across his optic ridges, down the nose plate and then finally to caress his mouth. War had aged him greatly, stolen the mirth from his spark and replaced it with a kind of dreadful purpose.
But for now, in this strange place where they could come together as mates, he could shelf his worries and let his true self show.
"I love you, my stubborn mech," she whispered with a grin. "Rest and dream the dreams of an unburdened spark."
It was slow going to remove herself from his embrace without waking him, a complicated dance of careful shifts and slides. Eventually her foot pads touched the floor and she took a moment to stretch stiff gears and get the lubrication lines flowing again. While she was at it, she activated internal diagnostic scans, checking routines and parts alike to make sure everything was in working order. It wouldn't do to start the cycle with a busted cog or with a leak in an important line. Talk about embarrassing!
Chuckling to herself, she crossed the room to where her mate kept the energon cubes. Selecting one at random, she interacted with the subspace field around the precious fluid on instinct, only marginally aware of the fact that she shouldn't be able to do that in first place. That made her pause, her lip plates pulling down in a frown. Why shouldn't she be able to interact with a subspace field? And wasn't there another question she should be considering right now?
Frowning harder, she ordered another scan of her systems and when that came back clear, she shrugged. Maybe she and her mate had sparked harder than she thought if her processors were still this fogged up. That made her giggle. Ironhide and Chromia so did not have the corner market on intense sparkings if she had anything to say about it. Leaning against the wall, her optics focused on the sleeping form of her beloved, she drew deeply on her energon cube—
—and nearly dropped the thing as a voice in her processors screeched at the top of its range. POISON! NO! DON'T! STOP! KILL US! NONONOnonono…
Lydia sputtered energon all over her hands, optics wide and battle routines bristling through her systems. Her targeting locks searched frantically for the owner of that voice, outrage blazing in her spark. How dare someone break through the medical coding on the door and interrupt her mate's rest! How dare they accuse him of keeping poisoned energon! She'd blast them all the way back to the Matrix for so much as processing the idea.
Scans detected and reported only herself and her mate in the immediate area. Even the adjacent wings of the medical facility were oddly empty of life signs. That should have bothered her, too. Normally Red Alert or Jolt was present when Ratchet took his recharge time. Everymech knew that. Med bay was not to be unmanned at ANY time per Ratchet's own orders.
So where was everyone?
Her first thought was battle. Something had happened and there was a battle going on. That line of logic was immediately dismissed as she found a cloth to wipe up the spilled energon. Ratchet had hard coded serious programs into his processors that would alert him if so much as the word 'battle' left Ironhide or Prime's comm. lines. In any form. No depths of recharge would keep him from that knowledge.
She leaned back against the wall, sipping at the remaining cube and trying not to frown again. Linking up with the mainframe showed every Autobot's schedule for the next earth week and there were no pertinent meetings that required everyone to attend. So, where was everyone? Again, she frowned. That wasn't the question she was supposed to be pondering. Wasn't there something she had she asked herself when she had first come out of recharge?
Her fingers toyed with the empty cube as she wracked her mainframe for the answer. It was something to do with… with what she was. Well, that was idiotic. She knew who she was. She was on the Autobot side of the war, mated to Ratchet, his only beloved. Her designation was Lydia. But that didn't answer whatshe was. Nor did that tell her why someone had tried to warn her not to ingest the energon.
Which was stupid, too, she reflected in frustration, disengaging the empty cube field and watching it dissolve into nothingness in her palm. The energon was perfectly fine. The unfamiliar taste had been a pleasure that had warmed her parts like always… right?
But if it warmed her parts like always, why had she described its taste as unfamiliar? And why the frag was she in med bay anyway? Didn't she and her mate have quarters together?
And where in the known universe waseverybot?
And why, by Primus, couldn't she remember the slaggin' question she asked herself when she onlined her optics!
Lydia whipped around, hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. Her cooling fans kicked in, her spark racing with her anger. She needed something to throw, just some way to expel the rage building up inside. She should be able to remember a simple question. She wasn't some glitch-spawned malfunction. Her fingers reached for the first thing on the table—
—and nearly jerked back in alarm.
Ratchet's experiment, the one she had distracted him from earlier, flickered and pulsed before her optics. Horror filled her, watching the pulsating bluish-white ball of light twinkle as if in response to her rage. Oh, no… No, had she distracted him from shelling a sparkling? Had he actually left a sparkling unattended and unprotected like that just to spark-merge with her?
She wasn't sure where she felt the most horror, at herself for being the distraction, or at her mate for allowing her to pull him away from this precious, almost sacred work. Her tanks churned horribly, threatening to expel the energon she had just enjoyed. What would she say to that sparkling's creators? How would she ever meet their gazes again?
She just about called out to her mate when the spark pulsed again, brighter this time. Almost as if in a trace, she took a step towards it, optics locked on its radiant light… or rather, what that light hovered above. There was something there, some kind of tiny form just below and behind the glowing ball of life. It was too small to be a sparkling shell.
And even as her optics narrowed and zoomed in on the thing in question, dread began to fill her core. It replaced the horror and reminded her of why she did not want to look at this experiment in the first place. But it was already too late to pull back, her optics locking onto the form. She couldn't make it out the details, not with the spark's light flashing above it. But she could have sworn the shape was familiar, intimately familiar, actually.
It was the outline of a human female, one with long rangy limbs and hair cut short and curled around her head… almost like a helm of curls. In fact she had personally had it cut that way after the battle in the airplane. There hadn't been much to cut anyway, much of it having burned off in the fire—
Her optics widened, the dread and horror overtaking her in a rush. This wasn't an experiment. She was looking down at herself throughthe barrier of her spark, much like she had tried to see through her spark to get to the femme in her head. Then, she had stood as human, only seeing an outline of the Cybertronian's form. Now she stood as the Cybertronian, staring across the expanse of her spark at the outline of the human.
Her optics dimmed and flickered, the world tilting out of control, and the question she had asked herself in the beginning was…
~*~*~*~*~*~
It was dark again.
The swirling air was warm against her skin, her body cradled with the softness of sand. Lydia was willing to bet heavily on the idea that she knew exactly where she was this time. The problem with that being that she did not want to be there, nor did she want to face the conversation that was surely to follow. After that wonderful moment with Ratchet, after being able to hold the whole of him in her arms and not just grasp his finger, to stare down at him while he slept, this was the last place she ever wanted to find herself.
She wanted that dream back. She wanted to loose herself there forever. And it was so fragging unfair that she couldn't. She curled in tighter on herself, nestled in the sand in the fetal position, arms and legs drawn up and close to her chest. Tears leaked through her tightly closed eyes, the sorrow expanding in her chest finding no other release than the precious drops of fluid cascading down her cheeks.
Lydia tried to blame those tears on the pain of her healing injuries and not on the pity party that raged inside her. The logical, level-headed officer in her quickly discarded that silly notion. She was always in pain in some form or another and had been since the day Starscream shot her plane out from under her—literally.
But this pain… this was something altogether new. This was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Part of her wanted to say the source of it was physically in her chest, and yet when her body followed her mind's notion, it found that the pain wasn't located in her chest at all. In fact, it could not pinpoint just where the pain began or ended. It was just everywhere and it wasn't physical, either.
"It's because you have a spark now," he whispered. "You're part of a collective whole that goes beyond your imagining."
She knew the voice, knew it from her last visit to this place… and knew for a fact that she was dreaming. That knowledge dimmed the phantom pain somewhat, made it bearable at the very least. Just as the knowledge of who was speaking to her somehow made everything tolerable. And somehow made everything worse. A new pain worked its way into the song of gloominess playing like an unwanted tune in the back of her mind. At least she knew where this note of sorrow came from.
"You shouldn't have died like that," she whispered back, slowly uncurling herself.
He laughed, the sound sad and beautifully masculine all at once. "Baby girl, most of us here shouldn't have checked out of reality the way we did. But that's not our call to make."
Had anyone else referred to her as 'baby girl' or 'sweetheart' or anything along those lines that wasn't a blood relation twice her age (or her mate, she corrected mentally), they would have received the rough end of her tongue in response. Pet names always bugged her for some reason, even though she was fond of handing them out to other people. It was a quirk, a flaw in her personality that somehow made her who she was.
But this mech… this mech could call her just about anything and it wouldn't have bothered her, just as long as he was around to call her by it.
"There's my girl," Jazz chuckled as she opened her eyes to gaze at him. "Nice to see your eyes back to the same color. That dual tone thing was a shade on the creepy side."
Jazz sat on what was left of the poker table, one leg free swinging, the other bent at the knee. One arm braced casually on that knee, the other extending a hand to her. His optics glittered an unnaturally bright blue, almost as if liquid gold moved behind his lenses. His armor was still that of what he wore on earth, shining silvery in the muted lights that came from everywhere and nowhere.
And though he sat on the table a good ten to twelve feet away from her, somehow his hand was close enough to help her stand. Like her last visit to this place, this twisted Egypt-like room with stone walls and seemingly no door in or out, she purposefully ignored the spatial distortions, accepting his offered hand and rising slowly to her feet. Once that was accomplished, once he lowered his arm, the laws of physics seemed to finish its coffee break and return to active duty. Regular dimensions returned between them.
She pushed the thoughts away, remembering Janice's warning to 'let go and accept' this place for what it was, focusing instead on her surroundings.
"Where is everyone?" Lydia asked, eyes taking in the sandy floor and the aged poker table, devoid of chairs and of any other people.
Jazz shrugged both shoulders, glancing around causally. "Guess they had something better to do."
"Something better than teaching whatever lesson I'm suppose to learn in this place?" She asked, lifting an eyebrow. "Last time I was here, your all knowing wisdom was to "let it go" if I wanted to save my life and Ratchet's."
"Worked, didn't it? And by letting go you both got what you needed," his visor rippled into existence, flashing left to right with silvery energy, a sexy smirk twisting his lip plates. "You seem to be enjoying the after effects."
She wanted to be offended by his phrasing, if not for the feeling that he'd somehow scanned her with that visor. His double meaning alone deserved her offense. The last thing she needed to be doing in this moment was talking about her spark-life/sex-life with a dead alien robot. Glancing at him, watching that smirk turn slowly into a gorgeous grin, she found herself smirking in return.
"Is it that obvious?"
He laughed at that. "No doubt, boo. No doubt. You radiate his signature like nobody's business. Our man Ratchet marked you good."
Her smirk vanished, emotions bristling so soon after the meeting with Banachek and the others. "What do you mean, marked me good? He used his own parts to save me."
"Easy there, girl," he soothed, patting the table next to him in invitation. "What I'm throwing down here has nothing to do with parts and everything to do with Spark Call."
Her eyebrow arched again. "Spark call?"
"Spark Call," He nodded, putting emphasis on both words.
"Oh, well, when you give me a two word answer like that, how could I not understand what you mean completely?" she rolled her eyes, spreading her arms wide. "Jazz, what is going on? Why I am here and what in the world—or wherever this place is—is a spark call?"
Jazz looked upward, shaking his head almost ruefully. "And you chose me for this assignment, why? Nova would've been a better choice to explain things, femme to femme like. Ah, well. Nothing for it now." He glanced back at her, patting the table again. "You going to join me, or we gonna holler back and forth for the rest of the conversation?"
Lydia frowned again, arms crossing over her chest. She slowly glanced upward… and almost fell on her ass in the sand. Before, when she had visited this place for the weirdest poker game in intergalactic history, the room had terminated in darkness. There was no roof, no shadows, no nothing. Just endless unrelieved black. Now… blue-white lightning hung like a ball, pulsating and spinning, throwing out arcs of power here and there. It looked as if an electrical storm of massive proportions had broken out above their heads
Lydia threw herself backward against the wall. "Shit, Jazz! What is that?"
Jazz sighed, shaking his head once again. "You keep this up and you're gonna blow a spark spire. Calm down, sweetheart, it's nothing that will hurt you. You're standing in the center of the Matrix, is all. Now come and sit down."
The center of the… She turned that wide-eyed stare back on him. "How? Why?" she sputtered. "Does this mean I died again? Oh god, Ratchet will… He can't… He feared…"
Jazz was at her side before she could speak another word, before she could form another thought. Just one moment he sat on the poker table. The next he was at her side, his hands cupping her face. "Look at me, Lydia. Calm down. Do you feel offlined? Do you feel fractured as though a part of you shattered? Ratchet is fine, cranky as ever. And you are not dead again. No spark shattering of a lost mate. Vent the air and listen to my voice. Easy now."
Her eyes snapped shut, fighting against the internal fear, the utter terror that, for a moment, she had believed she would never see her beloved again. She ignored the obvious, the fact that Jazz stood only an inch or two taller than her in this place, that his giant metal hands fit against her cheeks instead of swallowing her whole head in the action. It was more spatial distortion, more bending of reality as she knew it.
Still, her hands clung to his wrists, fighting against the tears that fell despite her best efforts and the self control that threatened to snap within herself. Ratchet was okay. That was all that mattered. She was not dead and her spark was whole. She latched onto that logical side of herself again, the warrior and officer she had once been, and dug in deep.
"That's a femme," he crooned softly. "I promise, you are fine. Your mate is fine. You think I'd encourage the two of you to find each other only to rip you apart again? Please, I wouldn't do that to my man Ratchet. I wouldn't do that to you, either."
She forced herself to nod once, trying to accept his words. "I thought that you all went to the Matrix when you died, uh, I mean offlined. I thought, for a minute anyway, that I'd died somehow and my spark brought me here."
"Well, you're half right, beautiful. Now come and sit down with me. We'll talk it through."
She only had to agree with him and then she was suddenly sitting on the table, legs dangling freely. Jazz sat beside her, back to his normal giant alien mode. For reasons she couldn't understand, she felt so comfortable with the mech, even if only having met him once in the heart of the Matrix, if that was indeed where they were. Comfortable enough to lean her head against his armor and kick her legs lightly. His arm came down, his massive hand closing around her upper half in the best imitation of a hug of comfort he could give.
"Why did my spark bring me here?" she asked at length, her voice somewhat back to normal.
"That part I don't really understand, myself," He admitted. "I do know that I recognize it, though."
Lydia wiped at her drying tears with the back of her hand. "Recognize it how?"
He hesitated for a moment, trying to find the right words. "It's not exactly a spark call, but it's close."
"You said that before and it still means nothing to me. I get the feeling that it should."
That time, Jazz did smile. "A spark call. It's how your spark and Ratchet's recognize each other. You're mated now, truly and utterly mated in the Cybertronian way. Your sparks are one, pulsing and living as one entity but separate at the same time. He'll always be able to find you, to know that you are online or when you are badly hurt. His spark will call to yours and yours will always answer. That goes both ways, you know. You'll always know if he's okay, if he's grievously hurting, or when he's calling for you as only a mate can."
She rubbed a hand over her chest absently, and smiled a bit as she felt a similar caress in return. "So that explains why when I touch my spark, it affects him?"
Jazz laughed, rocking his silvery chassis back and forth. "Oh, girl. I wish I could have been there in person to see him stumble like that, not just watching it through your memories. But yes, that is part of it. What you're forgetting is that part about your spark's being one, equal but different. When you do that," he gestured to where her hand still rested above her spark. "You aren't touching your spark. You're touching his. Which is why he was a walking ball of freak-out the day after your mating. Took him a while to adjust. My man shouldda hung back with you for a breem until you both adjusted to the feeling."
"That couldn't be helped," she muttered defensively, blushing slightly. "Things happened outside of our control. He was needed elsewhere. And I didn't know what I was doing until he told me about it."
Jazz's visor slid back, his cobalt optics glittering as he lifted an eyebrow ridge. "And that stopped you from doing it again, knowing a single touch would crash his feet out from under him?"
Her blush deepened, and his laugh grew. "No," she admitted, grinning to herself. "No, I guess I'm a bad mate. I kinda enjoyed that little bit of power over him. And I will do it again."
"That alone proves you two belong together," Jazz grinned widely. "You have more than a little bit of power over him, baby girl. You are his reason for standing for what he believes in, for fighting, for existing. It's a power unlike any in the universe. And yet it's a power shared by every living creature on the side of good, even a few on the other side two. You know the name of that power."
"Love?" she asked, looking up at him.
"Love," he answered, nodding. "But also trust and choice. It's more than the right to choose freedom that Optimus and the others fight for. But you'll learn that in time."
"Since when did you become the wise old mech?" she smirked, leaning back against him. "Weren't you some kind of thief?"
Jazz vented air in a fashion that sounded suspiciously like a cough. "Master thief, spy and saboteur, thank you very much. And if you spend enough time with the likes of Nova Prime and Prima, you'll pick up wisdom here and there."
They both chuckled a moment at that before lapsing into silence. Lydia closed her eyes, savoring the familiar and yet not-so-familiar feeling of his frame, listening to the hum of his systems. Safety and warmth flowed from him, and even to her one optic, his energy signature in the air was welcome and known. In fact, it was almost the same as hers; almost identical to the pattern she had seen emanating from herself in the med bay not a few hours ago. Her spark flared in little happy pulses of recognition, content to be near one of its own.
Her frown returned. "Jazz, why am I so comfortable with you? And how do I know so much about you? None of the others would speak about your life for very long. Your loss still affects them too greatly. So how do I know this stuff? And why am I not freaking the frag out about it?"
"I'd say it was your spark," he replied calmly, those optics staring down at her with gentleness. "If I didn't know any better, I would say we were kin. At least, had I still lived, we would have been kin."
"Kin, as in of the same clan?"
"Yeah," he replied after mulling it over a bit. "Yeah, that would be a decent explanation. But it's more than that. I'd call us siblings, honestly. Probably why I recognized your spark right off. Now that I think about it, it's probably why I was chosen for this meeting."
She blinked. And blinked again. And blinked a third time as that bit of knowledge worked its way into her brain. "You're my brother?"
"The term's spark brother. Yeah."
"Like Sides and Sunny?"
Again, he barked out a stream of laughter. "Primus, no," he grinned. "No, they are twins. More than sharing a mech and femme creator, they are a split spark. Myself, I was a shard spark, same as the one inside you. No one really knows—or knew, I mean—why the All-Spark spun out which spark and which clan it would belong. Only that a prospective parent presented a shell and hoped that Primus would grant them a sparkling in sync with their own sparks. Most of the time, that was the case. Other times…"
"Other times, what?" She prompted as he trailed off, feeling a wariness in her chest at the way his features became dark and brooding.
"Other times, the spark in the shell wasn't meant for that mech or femme. That spark had some other purpose, a… a destiny I think you humans call it," he explained. "It was a great honor to be given a sparkling like that in the old days. Those were normally raised by the temple guardians when they became younglings, serving a great purpose in protecting our culture and ways of life. And also protecting the All-Spark."
"And you were one of those?" She asked gently, placing a hand on his side.
He looked away a moment, optics dimming as if gazing across the sand could rewind time. "I don't know, honestly. I was sparked, and when I grew to youngling status, my parental units—the ones raising me—were killed. We were on another moon, some distance away from Cybertron. I had to learn to fend for myself. What I might have been," he shrugged again. "Who knows? What I do know was that I hooked up with Optimus at the start of the war and never looked back."
She clung to him then, and the tears flowed without her control. Somehow during his speaking, she had found that strange sorrow sweeping over her again, banishing the logical side of herself. And then something he had said before suddenly clicked in her mind. He had seen her interactions with Ratchet through her memories.
Could it be that the Autobot farewell of 'Til All Are One' wasn't just an alien good-bye? Here, in the heart of the Matrix, was she sharing in the memories of all that came before her, and they were sharing in hers?
Lydia took a deep breath, and like she had done with her own spark, she opened her mind and her memories.
"I wish we would have had more time to get to know one another," she murmured, voice thick with tears, awash in the memories of his childhood, seeing Cybertron and the All-Spark though him. "I wish you would have come to know your destiny."
He reached down, and again, maybe it was because she needed it or maybe it was just at trick of this strange place, but his hand was sized to suit her again. The pad of his thumb crossed her cheeks, wiping away her tears. "Uh-uh, baby girl. No cryin', now. And how do you know this isn't my destiny? To be here with you now and to help you find your way through your new life?"
She shook her head, looking away. "Just seems unfair to me. There should be something I could do. That anyone could do. It just… no offense, but it seems so bloody pointless you being here."
"Hey," he said gently, turning her face back to his. "Optimus once told me something and I held it in my spark all the days of my existence. He said 'fate rarely calls upon us at the hour of our choosing.' I firmly believe that even now. Had I been raised as a temple guardian, who was to say that I wouldn't have offlined millions of your years ago at the start of this war?"
She shrugged a shoulder, not really knowing what else to do or say to that. He was right. Even if it sucked so hard core to hear it.
"Well, if you're here to help me, then can you tell me what these dreams mean? Before I was here, I…" she flushed hotly, trying to push away the images that came to mind. Those That Came Before, and her newly found spark brother did not need to see…
Jazz whistled low, wiggling his eyebrow plates. "'Then teach me?' Seriously, you said that to him?" he laughed. "Gorgeous, you never say that to a mech. It's like saying 'spark me where I stand.' We've got to teach you some better use of your vocabulary."
Without thinking, she turned and punched him firmly in the side, taking a small bit of satisfaction at how he slid off the table with the force of her punch. Still, he was laughing as he hit the sand. "Not funny," she grumbled, though a touch of laughter edged the words. "And it's not nice to read someone else's thoughts, especially when she's doing her best to shield them. Ratchet taught me that. Quit being rude."
"What part of 'spy' did you not understand? Nothing's secret from me," he replied, climbing back onto the table. "And good work with that punch. Your spark's already beginning to access your frame. Keep working at it and you'll have one helluva right hook."
She stared down at her hand, then glanced back up at him. "I really hit you that hard? I thought you were just… you know, going with it."
Again, he shook his head. "No, baby girl. That was all you. You need to stop thinking about the spark as being separate from yourself. It's part of you. You are part of it. That's what the dreams were trying to tell you, I think."
"Tell me? What that spark did was turn us into a turbo-charged spark-machine," she exclaimed. "There wasn't any message in that."
"If that was true, why were you afraid to look at yourself?"
"Look at myself?"
Jazz vented air in slight frustration. "You aren't that dense, Lydia—and by the by, you better pick a name soon because Lydia no longer fits. You aren't that dense, and you know what I mean."
She shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. She knew, alright. Gazing down at her human form between the spark and herself, it had been frightening on so many levels. Her spark panged mournfully, sending its ready agreement with that statement. "How? How do I see it as a part of me when it has its own personality? It was really pissed at Jolt."
"Was it?" he challenged, "Or were you?"
"Of course I was pissed," she retorted hotly. "He made me sound like a bumbling idiot that couldn't comprehend her own brain. But I didn't want to challenge him over it."
Jazz sent her a look as if she should know better. "You mean to tell me that if Jolt had been a human saying those exact words, you wouldn't have wanted to slug him?"
She thought about that again, not quite ready to admit he was right. "Then why do I always see the spark in between us? Why do I see a Cybetronian, and why in that dream did I forget that I was human?"
"That, I think you are going to figure out on your own once you stop putting a barrier between what your spark knows and what your brain perceives."
"Oh, if that wasn't cryptic enough…" she crossed her arms over her chest.
Jazz smirked again. "Hey, I'm not here to give you all the answers, baby girl. I'm here to help you find them. Big difference."
The lightning storm above their heads pulsed suddenly, throwing lightning arcs dangerously close to them this time. Lydia jumped, unconsciously hiding behind him. She had almost forgotten about that massive ball of electricity suspended above their heads. It had been so quiet before…
Jazz merely looked up at it sadly. "I think your time here is over, my spark sister. Think on what I am telling you. And for Primus's sake, pick a name already. You're driving half the base crazy trying to figure out what to call you."
The lightning snapped closer, violently so, and Lydia drew her feet up on instinct. "I thought you said this wouldn't hurt me!"
"That's not coming from the Matrix. Pick a name, already."
"Why the hell are you on my ass for a name?" she exclaimed increduilously, looking for a place to hide and trying not to scream in frustration. Sand and one giant rickety table wasn't going to protect them from much. " If those arcs aren't coming from the Matrix, where are they coming from?"
"You need one. Why not pick it now?"
The wind stirred up, hurling sand and stone like a maelstrom, threatening to dislodge her from the table. She clung to Jazz, to his hand, as the lightning storm above pressed down. "Shit, Jazz! I don't know. Pick one for me!"
"You already have one. Use it."
She shook her head. "The only one I know is Phoenix. But Josh used to call me th—"
"To the Pit with Josh!" Jazz snarled above the howling wind. "That fleshbag no longer matters. It's your name. Use it. Keep it. It fits. You are Phoenix now. Phoenix, spark sister to Jazz."
There was a flash in her mind, the symbol of a Cybertronian glyph, and she knew deep inside that that was her new Cybertronian name. Her spark seized that glyph, twisting and absorbing it until it bore the shape of the glyph instead of that of a simple ball. And then the lightning became overwhelming, arcing in every direction, drowning out almost every sound and sensation and sight. "Jazz, one more question! What was your clan?"
He told her. The world was awash with pain and white light.