NOTES: I thought that this vignette would end up becoming an R-rated one, but as I wrote it, I realized that it didn't necessarily have to be one, so it has gone down to a PG-13.

IV. Scars

The water was cool and refreshing, and Hound could not help but utter a sigh of contentment. It had been a bit too long since he had last washed, and his trip through the Serengeti had already allowed a substantial amount of dust and dirt to accrue to him. It wasn't the most comfortable feeling in the world, so he was grateful when Addy suggested that they take a break and head to a place where they could wash up and rest without having to worry about night predators.

That place was some ways away from the main portion of the savannah, but had a spring so clear even Addy could see all the way to the bottom. Hound sighed with relief as he transformed and slid into the spring, watching the clear water ripple in the light of the late afternoon sun. Somewhere further downstream, a herd of hippos snorted and wallowed in the water, but they were far enough away not to bother noticing him and Addy. Their presence nearby merely added to the charm of this secluded hideaway: a reminder of where they were.

His audios picked up soft splashing behind him, a little further upstream, and he tensed slightly. He knew that was the sound of Addy getting into the water to bathe, and while he knew it was rather idiotic of him to be embarrassed by the idea of her being naked (Cybertronians, after all, didn't quite have a concept of nakedness - or at least, not in the same way that humans did), all the same, the idea of her without her clothing had been one that haunted him since that time at the elephant graveyard. It was intimately tied up to the fact that, somewhere between then and the current time, an emotion that he could not quite describe had crept up and bitten him in the aft, to paraphrase a human expression.

He lowered his optics to gaze at the water. Well, if he were to be honest with himself, he could describe precisely what he was feeling - he just didn't want to give a name to it. Giving it a name made it real, and if that happened, he wouldn't know what to do, except perhaps sink into the depths of despair and frustration.

For the first time, his wish to be human became a longing so deep and powerful that it hurt.

"Hound?"

His head snapped back up at the sound of Addy's voice, even if he didn't look at her, couldn't bring himself to look at her. "Y-yes?" He mentally punched himself for stammering.

"Could I ask you for a favor?"

Judging from the splashing sounds she made, Hound deduced that she was wading over towards him. He off-lined his optics, glad that she could not see the expression on his face. "Sure."

The touch of her hand on his armor made his fuel pump stop short for a moment, before restarting at twice the speed. "Would you mind scrubbing my back for me?"

His optics came back online at the shock. What was he supposed to say to that? If he turned her down, then she would become suspicious about what was going on in his processors, and he was not at all prepared to answer any of her questions. On the other hand, if he did as she requested, then he would end up torturing himself.

"Hound?" She was moving around him so that she could look up at him. "Hound, are you all right?"

He shook himself out of his stupor. "Yes, I'm fine. And sure, I'll scrub your back."

"Oh! Thank you." She put a washcloth on his leg, and he heard her splash around a little more until the silence indicated that she had stopped moving.

Hound picked up the washcloth resolutely, trying to convince himself that there was nothing wrong with what he was doing, that it was in no way an indication of what he felt. Why was he so nervous anyway? It wasn't as if he had been asked to march straight into a Decepticon base and take it down all by himself, after all. He had been through much, much worse than this. With that thought circling his CPU, he turned around to face Addy - and stopped, optics widening involuntarily at the sight he saw. "Primus..."

He had always known that Addy was well-formed for a human female, the result of an active, healthy lifestyle. Her skin was pale where her clothing covered it, abruptly turning a darker shade where the edges of her clothing ended. She was long-limbed and lithe, very much like a gazelle in that respect. But it was not those attributes that caused Hound to stare at her: it was the scars that raked themselves across her back that did.

They were horrible, ugly, marring the perfection of her form. Hound, who could find beauty in the form of most any human, found the white web-work of tortured flesh that stretched itself across Addy's back to be horrifying and disturbing, hinting at some dark event in her past where she came close to losing her life.

"It's the scars, isn't it?"

Hound focused his optics on the back of Addy's head, noticing that she had not chosen to look over her shoulder at him. "Where did you get them?" he asked, his voice hushed, the after-effects of surprise and horror still bleeding out of his system.

"It was around five years ago, maybe six." Her voice, too, was quiet. "I was with a few friends of mine in South Africa. We were watching a baboon troop, since one of my friends was doing a study on them, and we were a long way from our transport. We were standing just downwind of them, watching them...and then something happened. I don't know. The wind turned the wrong way then, I guess. The next thing we knew, though, the baboons were running towards us. We ran, of course, but I wasn't running fast enough. I got pulled down and, well..." Her shoulder shifted slightly in a shrug. "I got these."

"Can't you get rid of them?" he asked softly, and realized soon after he had said it that it was a very stupid question to ask. Scars on human beings were nothing like weld-marks, which could be sanded down smooth and then painted over. Scars were permanent, unless one were to get surgery done to remove them, but such things were too expensive, and Hound knew Addy wasn't so vain as to want such surgery. "I'm sorry. That was a stupid question."

She laughed softly then. "It's all right. I don't suppose you and your kind get too many scars, do you?"

"We can get weld-marks and scratches and dents, but those can be hammered out or sanded down or painted over." A small smile quirked his lips then, remembering Tracks and Sunstreaker, who were very conscious about the way they looked. "Doesn't mean that some of us aren't vain about the way we look, though."

She laughed again, and he felt his spark warm to the sound of it. "I would imagine so." Her voice turned wistful. "There really is not much difference between your kind and mine now, is there?"

"No," Hound answered, his voice quiet and low. If only she knew just how much alike their species were in terms of personalities and emotions... He moved forward, the washcloth in one hand, and tentatively reached out with it before stopping short a few scant inches from her back. "Addy..."

"Yes?"

Had his audios malfunctioned, or had her voice tone changed somewhat? "I'm... Are you sure that the scars won't hurt if I-"

Laughter again, but it was kind, gentle. "They don't hurt anymore, trust me."

"... All right." Deciding that it was all or nothing, he gently applied the cloth to her back, and started to rub gently at the marred skin.

He did not know when it all changed. He did not know if it was when his audios picked up the rich sound of Addy purring in the back of her throat, or the moment when, acting on a whim, he traced the largest of the scars with the tip of his finger. All he knew was that, after some amount of time that was both maddeningly short and exquisitely long, he had gone from scrubbing her back to running his fingers over and along her body, committing every curve, angle, and change of temperature and texture to his memory. And she, in turn, let him, turning in his hands like those little dolls in those pretty music boxes, smiling at him with a light in her eyes that went straight to his spark.

All it had taken was that physical contact, and they knew. There had been no need for words. Even now, sitting next to each other by the fire with Addy, warm and content, leaning against his side, there was still no need for them. It was enough that what had gone unspoken for so long had found expression in its own way, and now that they both knew it, there was no need to hide it.

It was he who broke the silence, because there was a question that niggled at the farthest recesses of his CPU. "Addy, what do you think would happen if I was human?"

She looked up at him, her eyes gleaming softly in the firelight. "Why do you ask?"

He peered down at her, unafraid now to meet her gaze with his optics. "Because I know that there are problems with what we have. We cannot have the...intimacy that we might want to have with each other."

"Oh." She looked away then, staring at the fire, and then replied: "It would be lovely, if we were both of the same species, but... Well, we can only make the most of what we have - and believe me, what we have makes me very happy." She looked back at him, smiling. "And why should you wish to be anything other than yourself? You and I would not be where we are if it were otherwise, don't you agree?"

Her response cleared away the last of his doubts, and he smiled, nodding. "Yes, that's true."

They lapsed into silence again, but it was a contented silence, one that was secure in the knowledge of what they had, what they shared. And as Hound slipped gradually into recharge, the wide night sky over his head and Addy curled up on the patch of ground near the crook of his arm, he sent a heartfelt prayer to Primus, begging that this lovely, halcyon time never, ever end.