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Chapter Thirty Six – Crystal Clear
Will sighed as he finished reading the paper in front of him, picking a pen out from the holder to his right and signed his signature on the dotted line at the bottom of the page, putting it in official, legally binding writing that he was giving permission for the soldier that was requesting a reassessment to see if he was stable enough to be reassigned from the island, elsewhere. There would be an investigation conducted over an undetermined amount of time, though it usually never went on for longer than a month, multiple interviews between him, his friends, close colleagues he'd acquired, his senior officers, and anybody he reported to or spoke to on a daily basis, really; they had to ensure that he was capable of leaving the island and keeping his mouth shut, as well as ensure that if he left that he wouldn't be inflicting more damage onto his psyche by running from his fear. A clause they really only put into place because Optimus insisted that everybody who comes onto this island, leaves just as stable and capable of living a fairly normal life as they did when they first arrived. Something that he'd never seen in any other branch, any other team, any other special ops unit, in all of military history until Optimus Prime landed on Earth and found it almost uncivilised that the US government would recruit, use, and sometimes even sacrifice its own peoples' lives until they were no longer fit for service, and then dump them where ever with no help for any of the issues they developed while in active duty. Something, apparently, that would never happen back on their planet, according to the Ironhide. After all those tests, if everything came back the way they wanted, he would quickly be reassigned and shipped off the island to continue his career, without being around alien robots from outer space.
He dropped his pen, not bothering to care when it bounced off the side and landed on the ground, picking the paper up and dropping it on top of the large pile of paperwork sitting on the edge of his desk, before reaching up to rub his face, then sat back in his chair and his eyes flicked over to the clock at the other end of the desk. Five thirty. He was technically finished his shift, but he had so much more work to complete and only a few days to do it that he had to debate whether or not to stay here and hustle through it or not.
For a moment, in the back of his mind, he could hear Sarah nagging at him that his job wasn't his whole life, nor should it dictate every single thing he did. He didn't live for the sole purpose of doing whatever the government wanted him to do, she would remind him, and then she'd joke that she and Annabelle were the only two people in the world that could fully control him. And to be fair, she wasn't completely wrong – he would do whatever his girls asked him to do, he couldn't imagine being a father and not thinking of his daughter as his top priority. Annabelle was kind, and sweet, and so naïve. All she wanted was for everybody to smile the same way she did all day, because everything was just great in Annabelle's eyes. She was like perfection in a little human body.
He reached over to his left and picked up the folder that was sitting at the top of the pile. He flipped it open and his eyes ran over the first paper, with a small photo paperclipped to the top right corner of the page. The name below was scrawled out in slopping chicken scratch that he'd learned to understand.
D. Jennings.
He hadn't heard much more about the situation between J.J and her supposed Father, mostly because it wasn't his place to stick his nose into another family's business and he reminded this man of that when Jennings attempted to explain himself. It wasn't his place to tell him that reintroducing himself to J.J was the right or wrong move, but it was his place to say that they both were not supposed to bring J.J down to that Hangar. He'd disciplined both soldiers responsible for inviting J.J into a restricted area, both of them having been assigned extra duties for a week, and left it at that. Mostly because it was unprofessional to stick his nose in their personal business, but also because he couldn't bring himself to respect Jennings's personal choices either. He didn't know much, but judging from J.J's response alone he could deduce that whatever Jennings had chosen to do had caused a lot of damage to other people. It wasn't that big of a deal either, at least not until he started to cause disruption throughout the base trying to find and talk to J.J again. To give the girl credit where credit was due, she was giving the guy one hell of a hard time finding her, and parts of him wondered if it was one purpose or not.
A knock on the door at the top of the room pulled him out of his thoughts, effectively catching his attention and putting it on the white door paint that would need to be repainted soon – some of the corners were chipping really badly. The door didn't open immediately, nor did anybody walk in on their own accord, which meant that whoever was on the other side of the door had little to no authorization, nor did they have enough seniority to feel comfortable with walking in on their own.
"You can enter, its open." He called out.
It took a moment or two before the door creaked open and J.J slipped into his office, both of her hands sitting in her front pockets.
"Hey. Ratchet said you were looking to talk to me?" she asked, her left leg straightening out slightly and her right leg holding up the majority of her weight as she took up the space in front of the door frame up.
He nodded, "Yeah, come on in. You can shut the door behind you."
She nodded and used her elbow to nudge the door shut behind her, then stepped forward and approached the front of his desk. She was wearing a grey wifebeater tank top, a pair of jeans, which was weird since he normally saw her in work pants, and her dirty and well used work boots hugged her feet and dragged dirt onto his office floor. On the top of her left foot there was a giant black spot that had been looked diluted – almost like she'd spilled oil or grease on her foot and then tried to wipe it off and failed to remove thoroughly.
"Yeah, um… do you wanna sit? More than welcome." He motioned to the chair beside her.
She nodded, and took a step to the side, sitting down on the hard plastic. Something in her back pocket, what he was unaware was her DeWalt pocket knife, clinked against the chair as she let it hold up the rest of her weight and she leaned her back into the backrest.
"Ratchet said you wanted to talk to me about my Dad?" she asked, clearly already somewhat annoyed about the topic of this conversation.
He nodded, closing the file in his hands and dropped it on to the top of the desk before him as he turned the chair to face her, sitting up straighter, "Yeah, um, when did you see Ratchet?"
The way her cheeks flushed red didn't pass over his head, but she did her best not to change her demeanor, "I, um, I had to talk to Optimus about something, and he showed up to ask Optimus to help him with something."
Lennox nodded his head in understanding, his face not changing despite how hard he wanted to smile – what had she been talking to Optimus about? Were they getting closer to each other? Was everything they'd done to get her here finally paying off? He'd seen them together more often, especially when he drove her to work in the mornings, but between all of the shit on his plate with work and everything that had happened to Sarah and Annabelle within the last month back home he hadn't really had time to keep up with what was going on between the Prime and the base mechanic. He'd seen her and Sideswipe still talking to each other and hanging out at lunch, talking to each other after work hours, and associating with one another while Sunstreaker was out doing his patrol units but J.J had more or less stuck to avoiding the golden frontliner, although the therapist that they requested she still talk to once in a while was happy to report that there was better and better every appointment since the incident with her and Sunstreaker upon his arrival. He knew that Optimus had reintroduced the two of them which had helped her progress by leaps and bounds, but he also couldn't blame her for her hesitation around Sunstreaker – he wasn't the easiest to get over.
"Well, that's good. Anyways, I just wanted to ask… what the nature of your relationship with your Dad is?"
She took in a deep sigh, blinked a couple times, and looked around the room for a second with no real subject of focus before looking back at his face, and they locked eyes on more time.
"I don't have a relationship with Daniel Jennings anymore. He made it pretty clear that his priority wasn't me or my Mom a long time ago. He made his bed. He can lie in it."
William licked his lips, the nodded, "So, your Father is an E-4 Corporal, and he's on his way to being promoted to E-5 Sergeant soon. All of his previous commanding officers have only good reviews about his work ethic except for one, and its assumed that its because the two of them never really got on easily. He's never caused a fuss, never had any issues, never started any fights. He's never been forced to be reassigned, every reassignment he's ever been a part of has been out of his own inquiries, hos own volitions. Now, all of the sudden, he's causing a ruckus, he's going around base looking for you, starting fights with people because he's not watching his mouth and he's saying whatever gets him more information for whatever he's looking for. Like I said, he's never been reassigned simply because his place of deployment wasn't working. But now we've been contemplating, if we let him have his little fit and work through it, will his behaviour stop or will he only stop once he gets whatever it is he wants. We've been discussing disciplinary actions, but from what we've seen so far they don't work on him. And if the only way he's going to stop making everything difficult is to reassign him…" he trailed off, leaving the rest of the sentence fairly easy for her to fill in herself.
She sighed, then shrugged, "I don't care. Reassign him somewhere else, keep him here, it doesn't change my decision to not be involved in his life."
Lennox nodded, "So you don't care about how we deal with the situation?"
Again, she shrugged, tangling her fingers together over her lap, "How would you deal with it if it was just a another solider throwing a fit over not getting what he wants?"
Lennox tilted his head at the question, "We'd start with disciplinary action, assigning extra duties probably, then maybe one more chance with one more disciplinary action, then reassignment. It wouldn't be such a drastic change on other bases, but we can't tolerate any kind of bull shit here, we're supposed to be professionals which means you only get one shot, two if we're feeling nice."
She nodded, looking somewhat interested, "Then do exactly that. I don't care about what happens to him, all I care about is that I never have a relationship with him again. He doesn't get to leave my life for the majority of it just to sneak back in when he sees an opportunity to be a manipulative narcissist and turn me on my Mom. Again, bed. Lay in it." She moved her hands from one side to another, her left side being the bed he made and her right side being the fact that he had to lay in it.
His chair creaked as he leaned back into it and the back of the seat bent backwards slightly due to his weight, and he nodded in her direction, "Okay. Okay, we'll deal with it the way we would normally."
There wasn't really a rection from her other than to nod, and Lennox took it upon himself to change the topic.
"So, how was your conversation with Optimus earlier?" he asked.
Again, her cheeks went red, and she shifted under his gaze. "It was fine. I just needed some… clarification on something we spoken about before."
His smile grew wider, and he attempted to supress it quickly as to not embarrass her. "Yeah? Is everything clear now?"
The way her cheeks seemed to slim out hinted to him that she was biting them on the inside to stop herself from smiling. "Crystal clear. He's pretty good at… clarifying things that feel confusing."
Will chuckled, nodding in her direction, "There's a reason why he's the Autobot's leader. He's pretty damn good at… everything." He followed his statement up with a laugh.
This time around, J.J let a smile grow on her face as she nodded slightly in confirmation. "I've gathered."
The two of them settled in a sort of comfortable silence for a moment before it was J.J's turn to spur on a new topic.
"Hey, my Mom told me about what happened to the house, I'm really sorry."
He nodded. "Its okay, but thank you anyways."
"Do they know what happened?"
J.J watched him reach down, bending at the waist, and picking a pen up from the floor so that he could play with it in between his hands – she couldn't tell if he was displacing his focus on something because he was uncomfortable or because he was happier to engage with her in conversation than he was to continue working.
"They're pretty sure the electrician that came over to fix something left a wire exposed or something. I dunno, I'm no professional but we're getting a giant pay out because the guy we hired fucked up and now my wife and daughter are out of a house, and we've got a burnt down foundation. But insurance is helping us out too. Actually, your Mom offered us her two extra bedrooms until we can rebuild, and Sarah was talking to me yesterday about taking her offer."
Jess nodded, "Yeah, Mom told me about that too. I think she's excited to have another kid in the house."
Will chuckled, "I'm sure Annabelle will love living with dogs. Actually, I think its gonna mean when we have a house again I'm going to have to buy a dog."
J.J tilted her head back and laughed heartily, "I can guarantee you you'll have too. The little ones love sleeping with guests, and she's going to fall in love with them so fast."
He rolled his eyes, acting annoyed despite the smile dancing along his lips. "Speaking of, where's your poochies?"
She shrugged, "I don't know, out there chasing Humvees is my best guess. Olly's a big fan of trying to play tag with bumpers, and your soldiers like encouraging it. Sideswipe seems to enjoy edging him on too. Anyway, Olly and Atari were going at it when I got here so I left them outside."
A chuckle came from between Will's lips as he nodded, "Yeah, I've seen him and Sideswipe running around before while you're watching trainings."
It was J.J's turn to roll her eyes and act annoyed despite the clear amusement on her face, "Yeah, well I can easily confirm that Olly and Sideswipe are essentially the same person, just in different bodies as different species."
His jaw dropped as he laughed, a look of realization crossed his face. "Oh my god."
She smirked, "Right! It took me a while to realise it too!"
FIN
Date Started: June 11, 2021
Date Finished: June 22, 2021
Last Edited: June 22, 2021