A/N: Deadlines hit so my muse and I reached an agreement and settled for an interlude this week. It was that or four thousand words on the wonders of accounting with the occasional "Seeker" and "Ironhide" tossed in for good measure. The chapter next week might be delayed – hopefully it won't but I still figured I'd warn in advance again *cough*
Sarah Lennox had been twenty-two when she'd met the boy she would one day marry. Whatever else William Lennox had been at twenty-one, uniform, rank, and all, he had still been very much a boy in Sarah's mind. Silly, flirty, enjoying his legal drinking age, and very much looking for trouble. He had grown up, of course, as they both had, had grown more serious and more mature as she watched the little stripes and badges on his uniform change and increase in number over the years, but a bit of that boyish manner had always remained and Sarah didn't mind. It had been part of the package she had married, after all, and after a decade of marriage, it had still made her smile... in between counting the many, many grey hairs she'd found herself with after said husband had accepted the position of commander of NEST.
He had asked for her permission before he had accepted, in his own round-about way as he tried to explain as much as he could without getting himself into even more trouble, and while she hadn't objected, she didn't doubt that he would have turned down that position if she had honestly told him she would prefer he refused. That offer had been there every time he had renewed his contract – she was the one at home, she was the one raising their child on her own, she was the one waiting for the knock on the door that might one day come, and however much of a boy he had always been, he had known the realities just fine. It had been close before, too close for comfort sometimes, and she had always known that there was a very real risk that his luck might one day run out.
In the end, there hadn't been a knock on the door but a phone call instead. NEST could move fast when it had to and she had been on a plane less than two hours after getting off the phone with a Robert Epps who had at the time clearly still been in too much of a state of shock to really say much, much less string together a coherent conversation. She had gotten the gist of it – enough to know that her husband was in trouble and it was serious – and she had been told the rest when she had arrived.
Been told the rest and been properly introduced to the most recent arrivals among the alien war machines that her husband had worked with – towering, intimidating beings that she still hadn't quite gotten used to. The first introductions shortly after Qatar and Mission City had been... unsettling and taken a while to properly sink in, but that had been under carefully planned circumstances and with Will right there as he introduced his new partner-in-crime. This... this was something else entirely and not appreciated in the least, worrying about her husband while trying to navigate the chaos that was the NEST base and alien robots that occasionally had far more weapons than processing power. Getting clearance and being introduced to them due to the risk that she might one day find herself in an alien-related emergency and thus had to know who she could trust was very different from being more or less moved to their base overnight, with only Annabelle and a few suitcases for company.
Between the shock of her husband's condition and being dumped in an entirely unfamiliar base in the middle of the Indian Ocean she had done the only thing she could do: drawn on every last inch of mental strength and willpower she possessed, focused on their daughter, and otherwise been there whenever they had most graciously allowed her to see her husband turned alien robot.
And there she went with the sarcasm again. Her mother, Sarah knew, would be appalled to hear it but she couldn't bring herself to care in the least, and certainly not when it came to the ill-mannered Hummer they called a medic. The jury was still out on the rest of the Autobots for the most part – Sam and Mikaela seemed to like Bumblebee, and she supposed that counted in his favour, and she was still a touch annoyed with their leader as well, but she hadn't been around most of them enough to form any sort of well-founded opinion of them.
None of them except Ironhide and even that had only been a rare, few meetings and a lot of stories from Will. Carefully censured, of course, but enough to give her a feel for the being behind the armour and weaponry and enough to make her cautiously trust him, too. Will trusted all of them but she wasn't Will and right now, Ironhide was about as far as she was willing to go on the whole 'trust' issue. He wasn't that different from her husband, when it all came down to it. More serious, more temperamental, more easily annoyed, but not that different. What Will might be, she suspected, twenty years down the line. Twenty years and entirely too many of those dedicated to war.
She stopped her restless pacing in the hangar – back and forth and back and forth and back while she waited for the news that was so very long in coming – and fumbled with the small comm-link that they had given her and which she still wasn't used to at all, the insistent sound it made not helping in the least, either.
Finally she managed and she kept her voice as even as she could when she responded. "Yes?"
"He's on his way." The voice was familiar – not familiar enough to tell much based on his tone of voice but still enough that she relaxed slightly at the sound of it.
"I'm not surprised. I felt his scan again," Sarah said softly. "Thank you, Ironhide."
There was some sound that could with some generosity have been called an affirmative acknowledgement before the comm-link went silent again, but Sarah didn't mind that, either. She was used enough to a husband that was very much not a morning person when he was on leave and never took it personal. Ironhide's little quirks were no different in that regard. A grouchier, bigger, more trigger-happy Will, that was all. Alien, perhaps, but still comfortingly familiar in his own way.
The comm-link returned to its pocket, and Sarah didn't have to wait long for the sound of mechanical footsteps that were slowly becoming familiar. Familiar enough, at least, that she could tell his footsteps from Ironhide or the others' – the detached, analytical part of her knew it was because his legs were very different from any of the other Autobots' and that he was a lot heavier than most of them to boot, so of course it would sound different when he walked, and the rest of her didn't care about it in the least. It was her husband so of course his footsteps were supposed to be familiar. Even if they weren't quite human anymore.
The figure that appeared in the entrance to the hangar was both familiar and utterly alien at once, slowly becoming increasingly normal for her to look at but still a very, very strange sight and still something she doubted she would truly be used to for a long time, much less the knowledge that this was her husband now. She could have met him outside, she knew, but had decided against it. She knew him, knew that there was a lot more of the human self inside that being than their medic and the rest of them probably suspected, and Will had never been big on public displays of anything. She didn't doubt he had joked about it but she knew him well enough to know that the human part, at least, would be beating itself up for a long time for allowing itself to get that... intimate with Ironhide on a runway in full sight of everyone.
His body language seemed to agree with that as she could actually see him relax slightly at the sight of her and then kneel at a cautious distance away in the slightly-awkward way that she didn't doubt was a purely human thing. The alien body wasn't meant to move like that, not with the sort of legs it had, which meant that it was very much a human thing and another bit of evidence that there was more of Will in charge in there than their medic might be willing to admit.
She moved closer with a pale smile – tired, relieved, worried, and ruthlessly squashing that feeling of nagging jealousy that her husband shouldn't be that close to anyone but her – and then she closed the distance between them and sat down gently in the hand that he so carefully offered to her. Still unsure about his own strength, she suspected. Still not entirely convinced that he wouldn't forget himself and hurt her the moment his attention flickered for even a second. She trusted him but it would take a while before Will would trust himself.
"You are going to give me white hair before I'm forty," she said softly. "Never mind grey. At the rate this is going, it's all going to be white."
Will snorted; a very human sound from an utterly alien creature. "At the rate this is going, I'll give myself white hair." He paused and she could see the slight shift in his body in silent, tired defeat before he even spoke. "I'm sorry."
He didn't elaborate and he didn't need to.
The hand under her was oddly warm and comfortable for something made of metal and clearly designed for war, and she let her fingers brush lightly against one of his before she spoke, taking in the still-alien presence of... whatever he was these days.
"Do you regret it?"
The hand underneath her tensed slightly, just as the rest of him did, and while he didn't look human anymore, she could still read at least part of his body language. Some was obviously human, some was alien and took a bit more guessing to get right, and some seemed to transcend little things like size and species.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said quietly.
The truth, that, she could tell that much and there was far more in that sentence than the words let on. He had never been good at talking about things so she had learned to read between the lines from plain old necessity. The lack of an outright 'yes' combined with his actual answer meant that he didn't regret it if she didn't and while she was tempted for a long moment to tell him to stay the hell away from them, to tell them to keep their looks and comments and hands to themselves and damn well leave her husband alone, she also knew she couldn't do that. None of them particularly cared what the actual paperwork said but even then, she knew just fine that it wasn't just her husband anymore, body language alone could tell her that. There were two distinct personalities and only one of them was hers. The other one might have staked a claim, too, or whatever alien robots did when it came to cross-species things, but it didn't change the fact that it wasn't her husband, wasn't human, and didn't share the same ideas with her particular culture – about relationships or anything else.
The fact that it had apparently influenced her husband, too, wasn't something she particularly liked but she also wasn't blind to the fact that the influence went both ways. She sincerely doubted that alien part would have cared the least about her otherwise.
"At least you have good taste," she snorted, momentarily annoyed with the whole damn lot of them again for putting her husband in that situation in the first place, and then she calmed down again and curled up in his hand. "I don't like it but you need it. It's not a lack of self-control or because you don't care about me. It's... programmed. Hard-wired," she said quietly. "It's not something you can really fight."
Another alien thought she still wasn't comfortable with. She had grown up with the concept of free will and the right and responsibility of making her own choices. Something like programming that told you to... to interface or suffer actual, physical consequences and become a genuine danger to your surroundings was a very uncomfortable thought and not something she particularly liked to think about. It brought up entirely too many questions about consent and about whether or not it was even possible to actually give consent when you didn't have a choice in the first place, and those thoughts were unsettling enough without applying them to the very real situation her husband found himself in. How could anyone be sure what was programming and what was choice when it was hard-wired into your being?
Will shifted uneasily – another gesture that reminded her of the human he had once been – and Sarah continued before he had the chance to argue with her. "I know you tried and we all saw what it resulted in. You could fight it but that wouldn't be good for anyone, much less you. I mean it, Will. I like Ironhide. I trust him. Yes, it's... it's a bit of a strange situation, but we'll adapt to that. I'll fight for it if you do, too."
He lifted his other hand to caress her hair with one infinitely gentle metal finger, his voice relieved when he spoke. "I will. I'm still myself, just... taller and uglier. It's pretty for a mech, apparently, but..." he shrugged. "Still ugly to me. We stopped arguing about that a while back, it and me."
And there it was again, the reminder that there were two personalities in there, even if his whole way of being hadn't made that perfectly clear almost from the first moment she saw him. There was less of it now, though. Some was still human, some was still very alien, but a lot of it had blended to some degree to some strange mix of mannerism and behaviour that was both disturbingly familiar and at the same time so very much not.
"Not ugly. 'Different', honey. The word you're looking for is 'different' or 'unique'," Sarah said mildly. "Mind your manners. I don't want Annabelle to pick up that kind of thing."
Annabelle, their daughter, the biggest of the remaining issues that no one seemed to have anything even approaching enough backbone to even look at, much less deal with, and she both felt and saw as Will stayed unnaturally still for a moment.
"She's fine," Sarah said before Will could argue, her voice low and soothing. "She's fine, Will. There's a day care on the main base where she spends most of the day. It's a nice place. Not too many children and they're used to strange working hours. She's fine, Will. We still have to figure out what to tell her and she has figured out that something is wrong but for now, she's just fine."
"Keeping her away from the crazier of the 'Bots?" Will asked quietly. "Good idea. I trust them, but..."
He shrugged carefully, mindful of Sarah still in his hand, and Sarah nodded her agreement. Bumblebee had been careful around her and was used to human teenagers, and Will might trust them but that didn't change the fact that they were massive, alien robots and letting a three-year-old near them was asking for an accident of some sort. As for Will himself, she had gotten every impression that he was unsure about his own new body at best and that even picking her up took most of his attention to stay even remotely calm when faced with the very real risk that he might accidentally harm her. Picking up something as small and fragile and with as little a sense of self-preservation as Annabelle...
No.
Allies or not, friendly or not, kind or not, that was her little girl and Sarah was not letting anything harm her if she could stop it.
Unhappy with the way her thoughts were headed, Sarah shook her head and forced herself to change the topic. Will was there for a reason, after all. He might not even be aware of it but she knew him well enough to be able to tell and she could guess the most probable reason, too.
"So can I expect a search party to show up any moment or did you actually have permission to leave?" she asked dryly. Ironhide hadn't mentioned anything but knowing her husband's reluctance to stay still for any period of time...
His alien features weren't really meant to convey the feeling of sheepishness but he managed surprisingly well, anyway. "Ratchet didn't tell me to stop," he argued half-heartedly. "And he had fixed all the dents."
He paused and the sheepishness faded to be replaced by quiet seriousness. "I had to know. I had to see you. Starscream mentioned some things and I was... reminded of a few things on my own, too. I'm stuck in the middle of a tug-of-war and there isn't a fragging thing I can do about it other than wait and see what boss ends up holding my leash." There wasn't quite bitterness in the last words but the annoyance was more than enough, anyway. "I had to see you. I had to make sure you were at least sort of okay with this."
There was more in that than he said out loud but those lines weren't hard to read between. She wasn't Optimus Prime's, or one of the enemy, or whatever other sides might be involved in it. She might not know a lot about what was happening or how to help but she would do her damn best to be support if he needed it, an ear if he wanted to talk and a shoulder to rest on if he was tired, and he needed that reassurance now.
"You know I am," she agreed, just as quiet and serious. "And the rest?"
Silence. Nothing in his body language she could read and recognise, nothing but silence that stretched on for several long seconds before he touched her hair again gently. "We'll handle it."
Plenty of things left unspoken in those words – we'll handle it through whatever means necessary and don't worry about it, along with a personal favourite she wasn't sure about but strongly suspected to be true, anyway: We don't have a plan but that never stopped us before.
Nothing she could do or say about any of that so instead she just sighed. She'd never liked it much but then, it was nothing she hadn't tried before when he had still been human. The stakes might be higher this time and the focus more on her husband as a person and not just as the guy who happened to be in command, but it was still her husband in a nutshell, impulsiveness and all included.
"Just don't get yourself killed," she finally said softly.
Please. I can't handle it, not again.
She didn't need to speak those words out loud. Will understood just fine and that gentle feel of metal fingers rested lightly on her shoulders in a surprisingly warm touch.
The lack of a verbal response told her everything she needed to know, too.
I can't promise that.
She put her hand on one of his fingers in her own silent response and squeezed slightly. It was different from gripping his hand but it got the point across, anyway, she hoped.
Then try your best.
She got a wry half-smirk in response. An alien one, granted, but still mostly recognisable. Trust me.
Brat, she responded silently with a light smack against his hand before she looked up at him again. Feeling better? she mouthed soundlessly. Spoken words could be overheard. Sure, someone could spot them and make out somehow what she was saying now, too, but the chance was a lot less and this was... personal. Not something she felt like sharing with the rest of NEST, human or alien or otherwise, however much of a right to her husband's life they might think they had.
He nodded almost imperceptibly in response and rested one gentle finger against her back. Yeah. Thank you.
"They'll probably be looking for you soon," Sarah finally said softly. She suspected so, at least, based on what little she knew about their medic and considering that Will had apparently left without actual permission, she couldn't even blame him, either.
Will just offered another wry smile, that gentle caress of a finger against her back never stopping. "Then let them look." I'm not going anywhere.
Sarah knew she should argue, should probably tell him to get his metallic behind back to their medic and get the all-clear just in case, but she didn't. It was her husband, they were hers, both of them, they were there, and for now, that was all she cared about.
The rest of the world could wait. For now, Sarah Lennox was content.