Shout out to inmemoryofblue, Steelcode, SummerMistedDragon, FluffyPrime, jynkx, i love athrun, and SilverDragon13 for taking the time to review last chapter! And welcome back to everybody else who's sticking around and riding this roller coaster with me. I hope you enjoy!
Chapter Twenty Five – Weight Of The Room
"This place is gross."
"I know."
"These chairs are fragging weird, what is this stuff?"
"Plastic, or some kind of compound with plastic in it, at least."
"Its actually mostly metal, some resin and plastic for reinforcement, and a cushion with cloth for comfort." The CMO adjacent to them pointed out.
"Why do you know that?"
"You learn a lot of weird facts while on this planet."
He was silent for a moment, and he looked around the room, his eyes even scanning the ceiling for a second.
"Why is this room so slagging small?"
The silver twin shook his head, "I don't know, Sunny."
"Don't call me that."
"He's almost here."
"How the frag do you know that?"
"These walls are different from the ones back home, they make weird echoes. Once you've been here long enough, you'll get it."
"I don't wanna get it."
"Shh, shut up, he's here." The silver twin whispered, turning and sitting straight in the chair.
As he did, the door opened with the sound of ped steps approaching, and the doorway was taken up by a wide, massive frame painted in red and blue paint. Two blue optics landed on the back of the silver twin's head, then flicked over and settled on the dark grey coloured mech, and they squinted slightly as he took his appearance in.
He wasn't sure whether or not to be shocked that the mech had yet to get himself cleaned up and repainted.
He held the door open for the Weapons Specialist trailing not far behind him, then entered the room silently, taking long, slow steps as he walked around his desk, servos clenched into fists, and stood before his chair, not sure if he wanted to sit yet or not – he wasn't sure if he had calmed down enough to sit.
Ironhide stopped and stood beside Ratchet, and the CMO couldn't help but wonder how differently this would be going right now if Prowl or Jazz were here and fully functional – their input always seemed to make the Prime slightly more open to other options, mostly probably because Prowl could think of every viable option as well as offer its potential success rate on top of the impact it would have in the long term in less than two sentences. Maybe three.
"Optimus, Sunny didn't mean t-"
Optimus stopped him from speaking by raising a single hand up, effectively cutting the young mech off as his eyes landed on the silver frontliner.
When Sideswipe closed his mouth and sunk back into his chair, his pride more than likely a little stung, the Prime's optics flicked back over and landed on Sunstreaker once more, who was doing nothing in his power to cover up his apparent discomfort. For what reason, he had yet to determine, but Optimus was sure the mech's list of discomforts was fairly extensive.
Finally, the Prime before them took a deep breath in, then spoke.
"Before I start, I must admit to everyone in this room that it was difficult for me to try and think about this situation with an unbiased outlook. And it is a lie to say that in and throughout this entire process I have been completely objective. But, with Ironhide and Ratchet's input, as well as speaking with Major Lennox, I do believe that given the circumstances, I have done my best to remain impartial."
With that, he took another deep breath in, then sat in his chair, placing his servos on the desk.
Again, he made eye contact with Sunstreaker.
"I am very glad you are alright, and I am very glad that you are here." He emphasized gently, "Every new mech and femme is a victory for us, and it helps morale for everybody here, humans included."
He sat back in his chair as he glanced over at Sideswipe, then over to his CMO before his landed on the desk.
"I need to know what was happening before you shut down. And I want to reassure you both, before you say anything, that Sunstreaker is not in any kind of trouble. There will be actions taken on our part to prevent incidents like this from happening again, however, because we can not afford two incidents like this."
Sideswipe nodded, then looked over at Sunstreaker, who looked more confused than anything.
"Is… Is J.J okay?" the silver twin asked softly, sounding somewhat hesitant albeit the worry in his tone.
Optimus smiled softly at the mention of the little human he was so fond of.
"She is scared, which is understandable, and currently processing everything that she went through in the way she knows best and in her own time, which is again understandable, but Major Lennox has a mental health professional on the way who's been approved to evaluate the current state of her psyche, as well as setting up a therapy session with an approved psychologist so she can work through and cope with the incident in a healthy way. Primus willing too much damage wasn't sustained, I'm going to have a reintroduction that does not include almost killing her."
Sunstreaker huffed, looking away in clear agitation.
"He didn't know." Sideswipe piped up.
"No one faults you, Sunstreaker. Accidents happen, but I can not also sit here and pretend like that wasn't my sparkmate on the receiving end of all of that violence."
Sunstreaker scrunched his face up in a cross of many emotions, frustrating being one, disgust being another, and looked away at the wall for a moment before leaning forward to look at the Prime.
"What makes you so sure that a meat bag is the one that was intended to be on the receiving end of the imprint?" he asked, finally breaking his stretch of silence.
"Sunny –" Sideswipe went to protest, but was swiftly ignored.
"They're gross, they're so much less advanced than we are, they're judgmental, they think and believe in a caste system that puts them at the top and every other being below them, what makes you think this one is supposedly different?"
"Sunstreaker." Ratchet bit out, only to join Sideswipe on the list of mechs that the mech didn't stop for.
"She doesn't look that special to me, she looked scared, actually. You want me to accept that the mech I take orders from was meant to be with some inferior little greasy squash that doesn't know the correct way to deal with being held at gun point in a fight?"
Without another word, Optimus stood from his chair, placing both of his servos on the desk in front of him, effectively silencing the frontliner in front of him, sending him sitting back into his seat.
His voice was deep, almost terrifying as he spoke, his tone mirroring how startling his stature was as he leaned over the desk.
"I don't expect anybot here to understand. I don't need anybot to understand, but I was lucky to have a team, a family, that did, and continues, to support me despite her lack of awareness as to who she is to me. I've had to work through, with, and around many of their species in the past few years in order to secure our safety, freedom, and basic rights, and much like us they are plentiful in their personalities and characteristics. And if you can not bring yourself to support this without being able to understand why or how then that is alright. It takes every and all kinds to make this world go around. But I wish to remind you of two things. The first is that you would be still injured, locked out of your own frame, forced into a shutdown, and more than likely offlined without that so called Meat Bag that you refer to deciding that you were worth saving and fixing. And second, is that that Meat Bag is my Sparkmate. With that in mind, I would choose your next words very carefully. May I remind you as to what I said in the beginning; I find it hard to remain objective in this situation when J.J is the one being negatively affected, whether it be by humans or one of my own."
There was no real threat laid down, no real consequences spoken about. However, despite that, the four mechs in the room felt the weight of the room on each of their shoulders as the Prime glowered at the frontliner in front of him.
He stood at full height, lifting all of his weight from the table.
After a long fifteen, maybe twenty seconds, the Prime took another deep breath in, moving his optics upward to stare at the wall rather than the twins in front of him – if he continued to glare at them, he knew they would get more uncomfortable than they already were.
"I am finding it difficult to remain unbiased currently, despite the fact that I was expecting resistance from you, and it is not fair to you if I continue to attempt to work this out here and now with my current state. To continue this debriefing would be to do nothing but set you and I both up for failure. You do not deserve that. Sideswipe will fill you in on how to create and submit a report with the data pads here. I expect a fully comprehensive debriefing on my desk within the next forty eight hours with the details of the fight you were engaged in before being forced to shut down."
Sideswipe seemed to brighten up slightly, "Yes sir, I'll show him."
Optimus nodded. "If you have any questions, my door is still open to everybot here, yourself included, however I will most likely be busy for the next few days. Ironhide and Ratchet are your best resources after me."
Sunstreaker nodded, "Bet you miss Prowl right about now."
Optimus took a deep breath in and nodded, "Yes, indeed, he would be an asset to me right now. But we work with what we have, and I am lucky enough to have two wonderful mechs who are incredibly willing to help me out as much as they can, and an amazing team behind me as well. I'm working on getting you a compatible alt mode, as well as various paint options that I do believe you'd prefer, however the humans have requested that you stay on the quiet side for now, so I do ask that you try and stay in our hangar, and stay to yourselves, until I can get details sorted, and everything settles down. Once everything, including my own emotions, have calmed down I will have you return to my office so I can explain everything to you. Until then, you two are dismissed."
The two stood and left the room in a hurry, and Optimus settled in his chair with another sigh.
"Are you alright, my friend?" Ratchet asked.
Optimus took a moment to remain completely silent, then shook his head, "I knew this would be hard, I figured we'd encounter opinions that thought it was wrong, but… not in a situation like this."
"The punk will come around. He may stupid, but he isn't going to try and deny a Sparkmate for very long, especially a Prime's." Ironhide tried to reassure him.
"He'll understand, Optimus, he just has a lot of information to take in and digest right now. We can't be angry at him for questioning something that is in and of itself a peculiar situation."
Optimus nodded slowly, "I know."
Ironhide moved and took a seat on one of the chairs before the desk, "Is she… alright?"
Optimus smiled somewhat gently again, "For now. I do believe taking it one step at a time with her is our best option currently. She admitted to me that she…" he trailed off for a moment, looking at his desk with a strange intensity.
"What?" Ratchet asked.
"She thought she was going to die."
Silence rang out between the three mechs as they all processed what they'd just heard.
"She's the reason we have one of our absolute best and ruthless soldiers back on the front lines, she more or less saved his life, and she thought he was going to kill her until I stopped him. And somehow, after hearing her say that, I have to remind myself that it wasn't necessarily his fault, and that I can not punish him nearly as much as my spark wants me to right now because logic states he wasn't aware of any of it."
Ratchet approached his long time friend and placed a hand on the Prime's shoulders. "Why don't you focus on just settling the humans down, and making sure she's okay after all of this? Ironhide and I will finish with Sunstreaker and explain everything to him."
Optimus nodded, and offered him a slightly smile. "Thank you, Ratchet."
Ratchet smiled softly, and offered him a slight nod. "If you need anything else, you know where to find us."
X0X0X0X0X0
Almost as if they'd been there, or maybe as if they could read her mind, Olly and Atari glued themselves to J.J's side from the moment Optimus brought her back to her apartment, offering her an abundance of emotional support. Atari had even gone so far as to try and open the shower door while she was taking a shower and try to join her in the shower.
She hadn't done much since the accident, and she stayed mostly to herself up in her apartment until Mr Lennox came up and found her, and brought her to the medical bay. He'd told her what was happening, and that many people, including himself, insisted that she speak to the psychologist at the very least, but she didn't want to feel like an experiment, like everybody was watching to see what the after effects were going to be on her. After he promised that the therapy session was confidential and only a few personnel were authorised to see it, she agreed to talk to the doctor, Doctor Melissa Hoyer.
But once she actually got into the room, once she and the doctor were face to face with one another, she found herself at a loss for words.
"You were just forced into a very traumatic situation, something you didn't ask for, and you have absolutely nothing to say about it? Like, at all?" the woman asked from behind her clipboard.
From where she sat across the table, she shrugged and crossed her arms over her chest. "What do you think I should be saying right now?"
Doctor Melissa Hoyer shrugged, pursing her lips, "That's up to you. But you have to say something, bottling it up will only hurt you."
She took a deep breath in, looking at Olly's back from where he lay beside her on the floor, then looked back up at the woman across from her.
"I've owned that car for two years, I kept it safe and let it take up space in my garage because I dreamed that one day I would finally fix it and get to drive around town in it. I dreamed about finally getting to a point where I could afford to fix it. My life took a pretty big turn when I got hired here, but by some miracle I got to keep it with me. And yet, when I finally decided to start working on it, when I finally decided to pour my love and hard work into it, it stood up on two feet, let two rounds loose in the one place I am most at home here, which effectively destroyed the one place I found comfort here, and then attempted to squash me, crush me, and then shoot me. It also happened to be a sixteen foot alien robot from outer space. Oh, and the thing that saved me from getting shot? That was a thirty foot tall robot from outer space, too. Supposedly on the same side, I'm supposed to believe anyway, but only one of them tried to protect me, the other seemed dead set on killing me. So no, I don't really have something to say right now, except for the fact that, currently, my life feels like a badly scripted movie."
The therapist didn't miss a beat, she didn't ignore a single thing J.J spoke about, then tilted her head slightly. "How does it make you feel that he protected you?"
Jess licked her lips, sitting back in her chair, and looked around the room for a second.
Did she want to talk about how she felt – how she really felt – about him? No, not really. Definitely not a stranger, either. She deflected the question, hoping the doctor would drop the question.
"He's thirty feet tall. I'm five foot five-ish. I'm jealous of him."