A/N: Okay, expect an update sooner than this one, haha. I want to finish this so I can knock off a WIP and spend more time and brainpower on some of my other stories (read: Rise)... :)
I onlined slowly, wincing at the host of error reports that my diagnostics showed the moment I was awake enough to appreciate them. I heard voices and kept my optics offline, fine-tuning my audios to hear.
"…any idea who he is?" That was a young voice, female, human. It wasn't the girl Sari… Alexis, then. Aggravating to be so close and yet so far.
"He's got no ID chips." That was the Autobot Ratchet. "For a bounty hunter, it's not surprising. He's anonymous."
"What I want to know…" I knew that voice. Oh, I knew it… it hadn't reached my audios in stellar cycles, astrocycles even, but I would never forget Skyfire's voice. "…is how he knows my designation."
"Yeah, since you've been a botsicle for the last four million stellar cycles," the annoying yellow Autobot added.
"I'd like to speak with him," Skyfire answered. "Alone, if you will permit it."
"Well, don't let him out of the stasis cuffs until Prime says so. If he knows who you are, he could be dangerous. Besides, he's with Lockdown. I don't want him running around our base."
Skyfire agreed and a door hissed, presumably behind the rest of them. Footsteps drew near.
"You may as well online your optics," Skyfire said, to my surprise.
"How did you know I was awake?" I asked, hesitant to power up my optics. If I saw him… I wasn't sure what it would do to me.
But online I did, and see him I did. He looked just as he had when I knew him, from the blue optics to the wide white wings. An Autobot sigil— the older version, the one he had worn since the Academy— stared at me from his chestplate, just above his cockpit. But he was looking at me with curiosity, not recognition. He hadn't changed in four million stellar cycles, but I had. My optics, my voice, my very frame, all had been altered since last we met, since our first fateful visit to this planet…
"I heard your systems booting up," he answered, watching me closely. I'd forgotten how well his audios worked… it had been aggravating whenever I'd tried to sneak on him. I made no reply. After another moment, he reached forward. I tensed, but he just sat me upright, then sat down himself. Even from the floor, he was taller than I… I remembered how Skyfire hated to talk to someone who wasn't close to his optic level. "May I ask for your designation?"
I couldn't help it… he was just so ridiculously polite… I smiled, but I managed to turn it into more of a smirk. "You may."
He waited, then realized his slip and smiled sheepishly. "What's your designation?" That curious look was back… I wondered if I'd been too obvious.
My designation. What could I say? "Oh, hullo, Skyfire, it's me, Nova. Don't you recognize me? Oh, sure, I've changed a bit. Terminated a few hundred Autobots. Blown up a few planets. Nothing much." No… no, it was best that he didn't know. He could be content here, with the Autobots, his fellows. He would love this planet… the life. He loved organics… he would be… happy here. I couldn't ruin his life by coming back into it.
"Void," I answered. I noticed his optics scanning the glyphs on my wings.
"I see," he said. "How did you know who I am?"
"I have my connections."
"Your information is extraordinarily up-to-date," he answered. "I've only been reactivated for three solar cycles."
"Lockdown."
He frowned, but paused before saying anything more.
"You're…. a Seeker, aren't you?" he asked finally. I nodded, refraining from the "obviously" that wanted to escape my vocalizer. "Then you might… do you know a Seeker called Nova?"
I hid my tension under a glare. "You expect me to know every Seeker in existence?"
"N-no! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult you." He looked down. "I've been in stasis for such a long time that none of the bots here have heard of him. I don't even know if he survived…"
He sighed through his vents. I longed to hear more of his voice. "What happened?"
"We were partners," he said. He had that nostalgic look he sometimes got when talking about the past. "He was in the Elite Guard… he earned the rank of Prime just a few stellar cycles ago… that is, before I went into stasis. It all seems to me like it just happened… I don't know why he bothered with me, to be honest. He must have thought I was so slow, too boring for his tastes. But… we worked. I… liked him. And he stayed with me when he might have requested another partner.
"We were sent on a long-running exploration mission. It could have taken an astrocycles, but we worked so well together that we could handle it. But just a few stellar cycles out, we came across this planet. We were curious… we were sloppy. As we entered the atmosphere over the North Pole, a freak storm caught us and we were separated. I crashed in the ice and went into stasis lock for all of these stellar cycles until a human exploration team found me. You can imagine my surprise when they brought me to my fellow Autobots! They told me how much had changed in my absence.
"I don't know what happened to Nova… in all likelihood, the storm dragged him down also. My own armor barely protected me, and he… well, someone his size…" He shook his head sadly. "Nobody I've asked knows anything about him, not even the Elite Guard. It's as though he never existed." He looked at me. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bore you with my life story."
"No, not at all."
"You must understand that most mechs don't care about someone who lived before they were created. They're all so young… but to me, Nova was alive three solar cycles ago. Losing him is… difficult."
"Well, I'll keep my optics online," I said. "If I see him, I'll tell him you're looking for him."
He suddenly reached up to the side of his head, evidently receiving a communication. "Tell him I'm coming," he answered, standing up. I grabbed at a chance for freedom—I hated to take advantage of Skyfire's long stasis like this, but I shunted that feeling aside. I had to think of myself now.
"I'm not a Decepticon," I said. "I'm neutral. Under the Treaty of Altihex, you can't keep me here."
"I don't know that treaty, but the others don't seem fond of your friend Lockdown. All of them have warned me against releasing you." No luck… Skyfire was neither stupid nor naïve. "But… I'll talk to them."
He nodded a courteous farewell and was gone, leaving me alone in the brig. It wasn't much of one… no bars, no cameras or sensors of any sort, just a single room with a berth. Presumably the Earth Autobots didn't have the supplies for a proper brig. Well, if they thought that stasis cuffs and a door were enough to stop me, they were mistaken. I relaxed my arms, concentrating on shorting out the cuffs, but Skyfire kept intruding on my thoughts.
Skyfire… alive. In the last four million years, I'd closed my Spark to that hope. When the storm tore us apart, I'd barely escaped intact… like Skyfire, I'd thought that he'd surely been deactivated. I'd searched until my energy was too low to risk staying any longer; even then I fell into stasis lock on the way to Cybertron. When I crashed to the planet's surface I suffered much damage, including to my processor. Some of my memory files were corrupted, parts of my life erased from my archive.
And the Autobots, the Elite Guard, had they helped me? Had they cleaned my damaged memory files, sent a rescue mission to Earth immediately? No. No. They had accused me of murdering Skyfire… Skyfire, my partner, my dearest friend, my…
With a click, the cuffs fell off. I subspaced them as a trophy and stood, flexing my wrists. It was lucky that I now wore my null-rays concealed under my armor (one could never be too careful around Lockdown), for now I extended them and fired on the door, blasting it to slag. I ran up the hall, trusting in my instincts to lead me to the sky. Alarms clamored around me, but I paid them no mind… I was confident in my ability to get out of here before they caught up with me.
There… a room with a tree pushing through the ceiling. A gap large enough for my wings to get through.
I hesitated for a moment… Skyfire was back there. But that part of me was gone, long gone, left behind with my first name. As far as Skyfire would ever know, Nova Prime was dead.