The nanosecond they'd been sure their apartment wouldn't collapse on top of them, his trine had moved out of the communal barracks. Thundercracker circled the derelict ship that served as interim quarters for Decepticon personnel who hadn't yet got their diodes firing to live anywhere else. He landed at the stern, in front of the security office built into the gap under the huge cargo ramp.

Access was mostly automated by spark signature because that was hard to fake. Shockwave was both efficient and vindictive so whoever had irritated him most recently was assigned to visually confirm no one was entering the barracks with someone else's spark in a jar. The unfortunate this shift was Dead End.

"Have our quarters been reassigned?" Thundercracker didn't expect to the greeted by the morose Porsche. The shrug he got in answer was typical too. The Seeker glared. He didn't need to threaten; the Stunticon would eventually comply because he had nothing else to do. Shockwave could weaponise anything even boredom.

"Your fabulous accommodations remain unclaimed." Dead End pulled up the deck plan. 'Screamer had bitched until he got one of the big staterooms then blasted through the bulkhead so he didn't have to walk to the exit like the plebs. "There's still a hole."

Thundercracker signed in, updated the relevant information, confirmed ration allocations, lodged adjustment to parole, input the serial number of his left thruster, and all the other bureaucratic box ticking that spun Shockwave's fans. He also got a visitor's pass for Hoist so the 'Bot could deliver the crates to his door.

The Autobots rolled up shortly after he finished. Thundercracker met Mirage with a formal greeting. Dead End might not care but he still had optics. The Seeker wasn't smuggling a fragtoy into the barracks. For his part, Mirage responded with an elegant inclination of his helm. No vulgar public displays. He turned towards the jet artlessly to show the sparkling contentedly in recharge.

"It's not terrible." Thundercracker reassured as he led the way through grey corridors lit by emergency lanterns. The lifts worked. It was what it was. Everyone kept their junk in their quarters or it was confiscated and raffled off.

Starscream's spite more than extended to locking him out of here too except Thundercracker had thought of that and requested a new passcode. That went through Shockwave, who complied with the Second-in-Command at the express order of Megatron only. No favours, no bribes, no friendly compromises. The door opened on the first attempt.

"Leave the crates by the wall. I'll sort everything later." Thundercracker told the grounder before searching the stateroom for surprises. He didn't find anything but 'Screamer was smarter than he was and 'Warp could teleport. He'd ask Soundwave to do a sweep.

While the Seeker rummaged under the one berth and opened all the empty cupboards, Mirage avoided Hoist's optics. Several halls they'd passed had plasma scoring and/or shrapnel damage. Suspicious dents. More suspicious stains. The general air of a place where no one would find your corpse. The four locks on the door.

"I think it's alright." Thundercracker tried to sound confident. He sounded tired. He was tired. He slid back the divider into what had been an officer's private armoury and was now three-quarters of a room. There was a hole, albeit one smoothed off to remove any protrusions likely to snag a wing. They were high enough up landing was a problem that solved itself.

Mirage didn't avoid Thundercracker's optics as he conveyed with force of stare alone his opinion of their picture window. The Seeker made a humming noise then offered to escort Hoist out the fast way. Both 'Bots stared at him then. He walked the truck out the long way, gave the guest pass to Dead End then flew back in through the hole. Mostly to check the exterior of the ship just in case. He welded the divider shut with a controlled burn from a spare blaster.

Thundercracker put the blaster on a high self well out of reach of a sparkling. With an extra charge pack. Just in case.

"Did you tell your trine you were going to contract a secondary?" Mirage inquired as one might ask about the weather while his conjunx rifled through the crates to find Tempest's berth. It looked like Starscream had walked along with an open box emptying shelves and drawers as he came to them. If things had been folded, they weren't now.

"I mentioned the possibility." Thundercracker, veteran of many of 'Screamer's fits of pique, shook out covers and tarps carefully. If Skywarp had helped, there would be poppers and fireworks. "Starscream hated all his nannies. 'Warp's not high caste. His creators were all military. His Carrier took leave to raise him. They didn't want a surrogate caregiver for our sparkling."

"A concubine is a fair distance from a caregiver." He wasn't trying to needle the 'Con. Even holding the sparkling, Mirage wasn't taking that chance.

"Not if I don't frag you." He handed the grounder a swaddling cloth, pausing to watch the 'Bot deftly wrap Tempest. "Is this about there being only one berth?"

"There is only the one." Mirage agreed, though it wasn't.

"I'll sleep on the floor." Thundercracker pulled the sparkling bed upside down from the crate and fished out the pad. When he set everything the right way up, he swore. "Rust it, 'Screamer."

The lovingly hand-painted screen was missing, replaced with a plain rail that had come with the cot. Mirage wheeled the little berth over to the full sized one and tucked Tempest in, turning his back on Thundercracker to give him a moment to compose himself. Spec Ops programming kept his fans quiet as his combat protocols hammered for acknowledgement.

The Seeker unpacked. Doing so seemed to soothe him. Mirage had seen repetitive behaviour loops in his fellow Autobots. The usual advice was so long as the behaviour wasn't destructive to let them wind down on their own. Long drives in the desert, cleaning, disassembling/reassembling equipment were all acceptable. Arranging cushions on the bare metal floor probably qualified too.

When he had the heap to his liking, Thundercracker lay down on his front and pulled a pillow over his helm to blot out the world. Mirage stretched out on the bed limbs akimbo for the sheer luxury of space. The berths in the internment camp had been sized to fit the cells not the prisoners. Somewhere down the hall, an argument began and ended with a clang.

The ship creaked as the metal cooled. Cybertron wasn't accustomed yet to solar cycles. The precision required to set the planet in orbit was astounding. Mirage wondered if Perceptor had surrendered. He thought the scientist might just for access to the Decepticon research. Assuming there had been research rather than a desperate punt. Shockwave wouldn't have been twiddling his thumb for four million years surely.

"I can hear you thinking." Thundercracker said softly from the pillows. "Can't recharge?"

"I keep waiting to trip over normal." The noble sighed, shifting to a more decorous posture. He should plug in and run a shut-down sequence. "I couldn't wait to return home. I don't know what I expected."

"I'm just thankful we got off Earth before we ruined that planet too." The Seeker admitted, hoping an Autobot would understand. His trine didn't.

"Do you think Megatron will leave the humans alone?" Mirage had mixed feelings about H. sapiens. He didn't want them stepped on but a great many of them were annoying, a sentiment he had not vouchsafed to his comrades.

"Yeah, probably. It was only ever about the energon. Us running around panicking about our guys starving." Thundercracker rolled onto his side towards the berth. He ran a light proximity scan over Tempest; a habit to soothe the sparkling and the Carrier. "The long stasis felt like desertion."

"Yes, it did." The spy didn't share with the Decepticon that several Autobot factions had broken off contact shortly after reestablishing communications when they learned the Ark crew had been doing literally nothing for megavorn while the war continued on without them. Silent far away was magnitudes more forgivable than 'oops, crashed and napping'.

They lay apart together in silence, dropping into short periods of idling until the double siren of shift change cranked up the ambient noise. A lead-ped tank or heavy warframe thudding past the door woke Tempest. The sparkling gave a startled beep then did what all infants did; cried for their creators. Thundercracker was vertical in an instant, kicking cushions out of the way. He picked his bitlet up and felt his spark crack as Tempest cried harder.

"I'd give my wings to heal you, bitty." The 'Con murmured to his creation's helm.

"We'll hold him together." Mirage disliked himself at that moment. The tactical suggestion came out of his vocaliser so easily, so reasonably. He stood, his chest to the sparkling's back, the height difference with his conjunx allowing him to tuck himself under Thundercracker's arm. Tempest's distress eased gradually. "Will he take a line from you?"

"If he's not crying, he will." Trying to feed an upset seekerling meant projectile energon. Thundercracker pulled a nozzle from under his pectoral vent and offered it. Tempest latched on hungrily. "Knock Out put a tap-line in to fuel his tank directly but he hates that. I got a bottle for him with a rig so he can suckle. He doesn't cry if no one's too close."

"Do you need to be anywhere?" Huddling with a Seeker wasn't his idea of a good time but the blue jet was clean and his hands were incurious. The caste coding ran placidly compliant.

"I'm on Carrier leave." Thundercracker didn't want to rattle around in the barracks. He didn't want to deal with his trine either. Or go to the hospital. What else had he done before becoming a creator? He'd read all his datapads. Gone for flights over depressing landscapes. Stared at the wall. "What do you want to do?"

"I would like to go for a walk." Mirage said resolutely. He had been thinking about this a great deal. "A stroll with no fixed purpose or destination. With a silly drink and some poetry. Perhaps even a picnic basket. I want to do nothing at all while lying in the sun watching clouds drift by." He spoiled his own fantasy by petting Tempest gently in a way calculated to win over Thundercracker. "The humans call it 'la dolce vita'. I'd like a little of that."