Sorry, I lost track of what day it was and totally forgot yesterday was Tuesday! Thank you to everybody for coming back, and special shoutout to everybody who reviewed, including jynkx, Steelcode, SummerMistedDragon, and FluffyPrime
Chapter Twenty Nine – Storytime
Before either man could respond to the Major and offer a reason as to why Jess had been brought here, Optimus's engine screamed as he sped up to the building, transforming up and stepping into the building, relieved to see no immediate threat.
"What happens to be going on here?" he asked, "This hanger shouldn't be used as a common place or meeting grounds."
The anger coursing through her veins, seeping in her skin, stopped her from feeling the butterflies that flew around in her stomach to the full extent.
"I understand that, I just had him call Jessica here because I wanted to say something to her. I wasn't aware of her presence on the island before today."
"Don't call me that." She snapped at him.
He turned and smiled softly at her. "That's right, you always did prefer Junebug to Jessica."
In less than a second she spoke back, as if the response was teetering on the tip of her tongue. "You ever call me that again, and I'll have him," she pointed up to the Prime who had just joined their conversation, "step on you until you're just a stain on the cement."
At this, he jerked back slightly, "Jay, its me—"
"I know who you are, that's why the statement still stands," her fists curled up as rage dripped from her tongue, "You lost the right to call me that the day you decided not to write back. When work became more important than me, when your only daughter needed you more than anybody in the world and you decided it was more important to drop your family and start a new life, that was the day you lost your right to call me that. I don't know what you thought was gonna come from this, but I can guarantee you it will not ever end the way you want it to."
She shook her head as her face got hot, taking steps backward – as far as she could from him.
"Coming here was a mistake." She grumbled under her breath.
"Wait," Lennox pointed a finger in Jennings's direction, "You're her Dad?"
"Yes."
"No."
Her head snapped in his direction. "Harry's my Dad. My Dad was there for me when I got my licence, when I got my first boyfriend, when I had my first heartbreak. My last name is Robbins for a reason, you aren't my father."
Jennings's face changed. "You had your last name changed."
"Yeah, the man who stuck around through the hard times and raised me deserved more recognition than the man who abandoned everything he had responsibilities to because he got tired of it."
Her heart racing, her face beginning to go red, she shook her head as she turned around.
"This was a mistake."
"Wait, Jay, hold on!" Chris called out.
She shook her head. "No, coming to this place was a damn mistake."
The door slammed shut aggressively as she left the building quickly, in a hurry, walking as hastily as she could to put space between her and the Hangar she'd just been standing in. Part of her hoped that maybe if she didn't look back, if she never looked in there again, this would turn out to be just a nightmare. He wouldn't be here, and she'd never have to see him again.
The deep chuffing sound of Jake brakes slowing a semi truck down pulled her head up to see a flame-painted Peterbilt pull up in front of her, effectively stopping her march. He stopped and his passenger side door popped open.
"Can I offer you a ride?" his voice was soft, soothing as it reached out to her.
The anger that had been coursing through her very being dissipated into knot in her throat – she'd always been a depressed, crying angry – and she took a deep breath in to try and stop any tears from coming out.
Without saying anything, she stepped forward and walked up the two little steps to take a seat in the passenger side of the bench. The door shut on itself once she was inside the cabin, and it only took a few seconds before he was rolling away.
She remained quiet inside the cabin, staring out the window as he rolled on, playing with her bottom lip between her thumb and her index finger. The knot in her throat didn't seem to be dissipating at all, if anything the more she thought over the situation, the larger it seemed to grow.
"J.J, are you alright?" his voice seemed hesitant as he spoke to her.
She didn't speak any words to him, but her facial expression, mixed with the smell of hormones, told him she was on the verge of breaking down. She shook her head softly as she watched the world roll by, silent as a stone.
"Would… talking about it help you feel better?"
She sniffled slightly, and instead she looked down and picked at the dirt under her finger nails. "There's nothing to say."
He was silent for a second, just long enough for the silence to seem awkward, "I was under the impression that when humans are sad, talking helps them sort through how they're feeling."
She shook her head. "Maybe that's true but I'm not sad right now."
"You aren't? You appear sad." Had he been standing, his optic brows would've furrowed together – she seemed to be on the verge of tears but she was claiming not to be sad.
"I'm not sad," she said quietly, sniffling once as she looked back out the window "I'm fucking angry."
Optimus found himself in a weird predicament, one that up until he met J.J he didn't often find himself in. He didn't know what to say. Before, he'd never been unsure of how to respond to anything – part of his job was to have the answers or at least come up with them very quickly. He hadn't ever been at a loss for words until J.J walked in to his life, and now he found himself not knowing what to say at an increased rate to which he couldn't tell if it was something he had to fight or embrace.
It was slightly alarming.
He pondered on what he should say, how he should try and comfort her for a what felt like minutes before she shocked him by speaking up first, her voice soft.
"What did families look like back on Cybertron?"
The question wasn't odd, per se, but at this current moment he wasn't expecting that to be what was going through her head.
To be fair, she wasn't expecting herself to think like that either, but her nonstop thoughts had somehow led her to one question; were there any Autobots in similar situations to her? From divided families, frayed relationships with their parents, struggling to not hold a grudge over something family did. A small part of her, the part of her that she ridiculed for arising, wondered if Optimus was like that. And just like in the movies, they could help each other heal from it. The rational part of her shoved those thoughts back down –this wasn't some fantasy world, this was reality, and in reality she was responsible for her own healing. It wasn't on her Mom, or her Dad, or Optimus, or anybody else except her to deal with the grudge she held, the issues that she had with the world around her. Self reflection was called self reflection for a reason, she couldn't place that on anybody's shoulders except her own.
"Do you mean, what was the dynamic like?" he questioned.
She took a deep breath and finally look away from the window to gaze at his rear view mirror, as if looking into his eyes.
"Did parents just decided that they weren't responsible for any of the kids they made?" she asked.
His spark squeezed in sympathy for her, at the thought that anybody could hurt her like that.
"Well, family dynamics were slightly different back home. If you haven't noticed, the way Cybertronians work is more advanced and complicated than humans by tenfold. Our sparks, which is equivalent to your heart, have the ability to create various, complex ties from one bot to another. Some of them are established at the beginning of our lives, some are made on our decisions. Once a sparkling is born, a bond is established between the sparkling and each of its parents. But it was so rare that it was virtually unseen and unheard of for either parental figures to cut these ties between them and their sparkling. Sparklings can not be born unless its parents' are Sparkmates, which is our version of marriage, and bonds can not be undone, the only way for a bond to be removed is if one party offli – dies."
J.J nodded slowly as she processed the information, "Hm, must be nice."
Again, he found himself at a loss for words as she looked back out the window. She took notice of the fact that he didn't really seem to have a destination, but he was taking her farther and farther away from the center of base, away from that Hangar, away from him.
"I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound ungrateful, or come off rude." She took a deep sigh in, and tried swallowing the knot in her throat.
"What happened between you two?" he asked.
Her breath stopped for a moment, and her cheek bone suddenly became more prominent as she bit the inside of her cheek in hopes that the pain would stop any tears.
"Um, it's a long story," She mumbled, "And its not fair to dump all of my daddy issues on you like that."
He was quiet for a moment. "Is it considered dumping it on me if I ask to hear all of it?"
His answer, clearly rhetorical, only made the knot in her throat tighter, and her breath hitched for a second.
Her gaze dropped down to her hands as they moved to settle in her lap, clearly uncomfortable.
"Um, well, the man you just met is named Daniel Jennings. He's my actual, biological father; my last name was Jennings up until I was eighteen when I had it changed it to my step-father, Harry's, last name. That's where the nickname J.J comes from, the whole name I was given at birth was Jessica June Jennings, which means my initials spell our J-J-J so it was a joke that my parents started, and I liked it so it stuck. My Dad and my Mom met in high school and started dating. She got pregnant when she was eighteen or nineteen, like right out of high school. She was working some kind of retail job, and my Dad was working two jobs to try and make ends meet, but he ended up joining the army because they were offering him a really good pay for the position he was going for. So, I think I was, like, five when he joined the army. I don't know when it started after that, my Mom said she started seeing it when I was almost six, whenever she'd ask him to video chat or call us, he'd ignore the request and come up with some stupid excuse. It didn't take that long for her to fall into a really hard depression that affected her ability to work, and my grandmother had to step up and take care of me more because my Mom couldn't. I started writing even more letters when I was seven, begging him to come home and help Mom, and help me, but that was when he stopped writing back to me for everything, I remember that much. He stopped writing letters back to me, which he knew was my favourite thing. I loved getting mail with my name on it, I still do," she chuckled softly, "And when I opened mail and it was from him I was always thrilled."
Optimus wasn't sure if she noticed the tears that had spilled over the edge of her eyes and trailed down her cheeks.
"He stopped calling or answering calls outright pretty soon after that. Sometimes if my Mom was lucky, she'd manage to reach him and then they'd be fighting and yelling for a while and I could hear them. That took a really big toll on her mental health. I guess one time my Mom asked him if it would be easier if we lived on base for him, and he started screaming at her. So, he no longer wanted to be responsible for anything he'd built for himself. He stopped coming home for holidays and important events for us, he didn't come for any school events anymore, he didn't use his time off to come visit. My favourite holiday ever is Christmas, I love the festivity, the excitement, the snow, the cold, all of it, and he decided not to participate in Christmas with his family. Eventually, my Mom got a diagnosis, went to counselling, was put on medications, and decided to divorce him and take control of her life and what she wanted, and instead of calling to talk about it my Dad just sent the paperwork back with his signature on it, and his lawyer called my Mom. They sold the house, Mom and I moved to live with my grandparents again, and Mom went to school for a degree. The last letter I sent him, I think I was twelve or thirteen, and all it had on it was one question. I asked him what I did to make him hate me so much. It came back about two weeks later, the envelope had been opened so he read it, but the front of the envelope was crossed out and he'd written return to sender on it instead."
She sniffled, and reached up to wipe the fresh wave of tears off her cheeks.
"He just decided that ignoring us, ignoring the problem, would make it go away. I guess he got his way, in a sense. But I used to wish that one day I'd find him cheating on my Mom or something. It was a lot easier for me to reason his leaving with finding something else he liked better, but he didn't. He just decided, I don't know, I guess we weren't good enough for him anymore."
She stopped talking for a second, and took a deep breath, her face pulled down in what Optimus perceived as heartache, and maybe a little fear that she was never going to be good enough for anybody ever again.
"He, um… I don't know how he found us again because we moved two or three times after the divorce, but I got a letter in the mail when I was about fifteen or sixteen – I think I was sixteen actually. I couldn't tell who it was from originally so I opened it and read it. It was him, asking me to meet up with him now that I was older and could go behind my Mom's back, essentially. I tore the letter up into tiny little pieces and put it all back in the envelope, glued it shut, and wrote return to sender on the front of it. Made me feel a little better."
She shook her head, picking at her nails – he noticed that when she was in an uncomfortable state, or she wanted to try and get the attention off of her, she reverted her attention to her hands a lot.
"But he and I were really close. I mean, I loved my Mom but my Dad and I got along so much better. We did everything together until he left. Made pancakes together every morning, went on walk every day to the park a couple blocks away, stories every night. It took me a really long time to understand that it wasn't my fault he was a piece of shit, but…" she trailed off, shaking her head.
Optimus materialized his holoform in the driver's side, making her jump.
"Jesus, I forgot you had that thing."
Slowly, he reached up and wiped the tears off her cheeks once more. He didn't miss the way she leaned the weight of her head into his hands, trusting him to hold her upright as she closed her eyes. A couple more tears slipped out once she shut her eyes, and he watched them trail down her face until they were low enough for him to wipe them off with his thumbs.
When her eyes opened back up, blue and blue clashed together once they made eye contact.
She couldn't tell if the inside of the cab was actually hot or if it was just her, but it didn't stop her from looking over his face, noticing the way his stubble always seemed to be the same length, the way his lips – which were usually drawn in a tight, straight line, and accompanied a work-like state – had softened and were tilted upwards slightly, a small gap taking place between his upper and lower lip as he breathed through his mouth. His face had unstiffened, and though he still looked the same, he looked a lot more relaxed, a lot more at peace.
He really was beautiful. She'd always thought someone that looked the way he did only ever existed in movies, in the day dreamings of soccer-mom's who were watching the super young coach work with their kid on training drills, or in fantasy stories about werewolves or vampires.
"What did your family look like?"
He smiled softly as his eyes traced her face slowly. "I don't think its fair to force you to listen to a long and complicated story that comes with quite a mundane ending."
"Is it really considered forcing me if I'm asking to hear all of it?"
He almost laughed as she reversed his previous argument against him; she had him there.
FIN
Date Started: November 20, 2020
Date Finished: December 3, 2020
Last Edited: May 1. 2021