First off, I apologize for being so late again. Turns out I have more free-time during school than I do working full-time in the summer (though taking summer classes probably doesn't help either). Secondly, I originally intended this chapter to cover much more than it does, but then I spent the entire time since the last one fighting with it, and now it has also grown into a "parts" chapter, which I did not originally intend. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy, but I can't promise the next one will be out anytime soon.
Chapter 12: The Things We Never Knew: Part One
"Do you ever think about it Jack?"
The answer is tiredly confused as he focuses on trying to get a five month old Titania to take a bite of the unrecognizable glob on the end of the spoon in his hand; "Think about what?"
"What would've happened to us if not for all of this?" A wide gesture with her hand, encompassing so much more than it seems to.
Titania turns her face with a giggle and he ends up smearing the so-called food all over her right cheek. She giggles even more and grabs at the spoon. He can't help but smile briefly as they engage in a tug of war, even as he turns to face Miko where she stands in the doorway, her expression thoughtful.
"What do you mean?" He's certain he's missing something here; the unspoken rule of "don't talk about the what-ifs" being broken is never a good sign.
"What do you think would have happened to us?" She repeats, this time gesturing between the two of them.
He lets go of the spoon in surprise, and Titania lets out a squeal of victory and promptly begins banging it against the salvaged high-chair.
"Us?" he echoes uncertainly.
"Us. You, me…" she smiles at their daughter, who is now babbling along to the noise of her make-shift drum, "her."
"I…I don't know," he tells her honestly, frowning as he thinks back to the days before the world changed, back when he was foolishly pining after a red-haired beauty. Sierra remains impressed upon his memory strongly, if only because, when he had finally fallen for Miko, he had wondered how he could have thought he had ever loved the girl at all. Been attracted to her, yes, but loved her?
But sixteen year-old Jack hadn't known enough to know the difference, and if he tries to picture himself back in that state of mind, and if he and Miko had never been thrust together because the world was falling apart around them…
He turns away from his wife, staring at his daughter as she grins back widely, giggling.
"I really don't know."
Jack couldn't focus on the chalkboard as he stared at the currently blank page in his notebook, knowing he should be writing something down, but finding that it just seemed far too trivial to be worth the effort in the grand scheme of things. He was never going to use anything he learned from Art History class in his life, and it was one of the few times he could agree with Miko—
That train of thought was abruptly stopped by a flash of anger and worry as his shoulders hunched and tensed, and he clenched his jaw, inevitably thinking about Optimus and wondering how he was doing.
He had waited up for his mother that night, finding it odd that Arcee hadn't been there to pick him up after work, and that his mother had left a voicemail on his phone telling him to go straight home and that she would explain everything once she got there.
It had been ten o'clock by the time she got home with a worn-out, grave look on her face, and then, seeing Jack, she had told him to sit down. At first, he had thought for sure somebody had died.
June had hurried to assure him everyone was alive, before proceeding to tell him Optimus had been hurt—almost killed—defending Miko.
For all the stupid, life-threatening stunts she pulled, Jack had never been angrier with the exchange student in the entire time he had known her.
It had taken all his self-restraint not to march up to her the minute he saw her that morning and tell her exactly why what she did was so stupid. He would have, if not for the fact that his mother had stopped him on his way out the door that morning and forbidden him from speaking to her about it.
"I'm your mother Jack, I know how you can get," she had said, with her hands on his shoulders, "And I know you're angry at her, but she's already been spoken with, and reminding her of what she caused is only going to make things worse."
Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't still mad at her, something Miko had picked up on the moment their eyes met from across opposite sides of the street when they were being dropped off by their guardians. They had met at the foot of the stairs with Raf, and exchanged terse greetings before lapsing into silence, having nothing to say as the thought of Optimus hung between them.
Raf had nervously adjusted his glasses, and then randomly started talking about some new racing video game one of his sisters had bought over the weekend.
The three of them had all been rather subdued throughout the day, something that hadn't escaped the notice of the rest of the school. They had been pretty much joined at the hips since they became involved with the Autobots, always sitting next to each other in class and at lunch. Today, he and Miko sat on opposite sides of the room, and Raf, not wanting to be perceived as taking sides, sat in the middle.
Jack felt bad for Raf when he thought about it, and wondered if he was being immature, but every time he thought of being the "better" person and trying to show Miko that though he was mad they were still friends, his anger and worry would rise up and he would think of Optimus and feel sick to his stomach because he still remembered how Team Prime had started falling apart when Optimus lost his memory, so how much worse would it be if he died?
The thought of that stopped even the smallest pieces of friendly conversation from passing his lips toward her, and he knew he should take the fact that she hadn't acted out even once today as a sign of just how guilty she felt about it all, but he wasn't sure if he'd be able to restrain his temper if she put her foot in her mouth as she usually did.
It would be best if he just kept to himself, gave his anger more time to cool, and, hopefully, it would disappear—or at least be completely manageable—once he visited base and saw with his own eyes that Optimus would be alright.
The morning passed uneventfully for the young trio, and Raf gave up on trying to fill the silence between the three of them, eventually pulling out a computer science textbook over lunch and burying his nose in it as they sat at the cafeteria table. Jack supposed that the greatest sign yet of Miko's remorse was the fact that she didn't even make some snide remark about the computer genius' reading material. Instead, she merely glanced at it and away, fork prodding at her food (tap, tap, tap) as she sat in dismal, and—dare he use the word?—contemplative silence.
Looking at her, it was a little bit harder to hold onto his anger. He was reminded of his own dumb mistake that had put Vince in danger, but still there was the voice that argued he couldn't have known Knock Out would be there, while Miko knew full-well what she had been charging into. He sighed, took a bite of his sandwich, and chewed a little longer than was necessary just to create an excuse for his own continuing silence.
"Oh, hey Jack."
Jack choked.
He then proceeded to slam a fist into his chest to help force the food down, and then swallowed before turning to find Sierra standing behind him.
"Oh, uh, hey Sierra, uh—how, how's it going?" He cringed at his lack of eloquence, and then found himself blushing madly when she gave him a small smile.
Behind him, the tapping of Miko's fork stopped.
"It's going well, how about you?"
Jack hoped his face didn't appear to be as flushed as he felt it was. Sierra had never asked him that before.
"It's uh…" he wanted to say good, but the word stopped half way up his throat as he remembered that, no, it wasn't. "It's going alright, I suppose."
"Oh, okay, I…I just noticed you guys seem kind of down today…" It was clear she was putting the pause there on purpose, offering him a chance to jump in and explain. He hesitated for only a moment.
"A friend of ours just got hurt yesterday, but he's doing alright."
Miko snorted behind him, and he felt a flash of irritation and had to bite his tongue from reminding her exactly whose fault it was in the first place. He sent a glare at her from over his shoulder instead.
Pink dusted Miko's cheeks as she caught his gaze, and she rose from the table, lunch tray in hand, and then left without a word, dumping the untouched food in the trash as she went.
Jack—with the slightest tinge of guilt at the unintentional results—turned back to Sierra with a sheepish look.
"I'm…sorry to hear that," Sierra remarked, gaze briefly flicking up in the direction Miko had disappeared in before returning to Jack.
He rubbed the back of his neck, "Yeah, it's been pretty stressful for us…" He trailed off, wishing he could tell her more, and there was a slightly awkward lull in the conversation before he decided to change the subject, "So, uh, what are you up to?"
Sierra blushed the slightest bit, and her gaze slid sideways and away from him.
"Oh, I just uh, wanted to thank you for Saturday. Vince turned out to be a real jerk…"
"No surprise there," Jack said without thinking, then wanted to slap himself for it as he hastily backtracked, "I mean, not that, that you should have known that or—"
He expected her to be offended by the unintended implication of his words, but instead she just giggled slightly, red ponytail swishing behind her head as she plopped down on the lunch bench beside him, back towards the table.
It belatedly occurred to him that, except for that one ride he had taken her for on Arcee, he had never sat this close to her before. He could smell her perfume; it was nice and fruity, but not overwhelming.
"You know," she began, blushing slightly, "You're kinda cute when you do that."
Jack was sure that his face had to be scarlet by now as he tried to stutter out a response, "When uh, when I do what?"
"That."
"Oh, uh, well—thanks, I guess—"
She giggled again, and he decided it was probably best to just stop talking before his ears caught fire.
"So, I was wondering if you wanted to…maybe hang out some time?" She asked, sounding slightly shy by the end as she bit her lip and looked away. Jack could hardly believe his ears, and made a conscious effort to shut his jaw.
"Yes!" he realized a little too late that his answer was unnecessarily loud, and he winced at his own over-eagerness—she had to think him desperate now—before he tried again, "I mean, definitely…that would be great. Got anything in mind?"
"I know this nice café on Main Street," she suggested, "Maybe we could grab a coffee together, or something? After school?"
Any other day, Jack would have happily said yes to that, but he hadn't seen Optimus since he was injured, and there was this paranoid part of him that wouldn't really believe the mech was going to be okay until he saw it with his own eyes.
"Uh, after school doesn't really work for me today. Would tomorrow be alright with you?"
She smiled, "Yeah, of course, so, uh, I'll see you tomorrow then?"
"It's a date."
Horror and embarrassment dawned on Jack's face as he realized that, no, it might actually not be, "I mean, uh, not a date-date but—"
"Jack," Sierra interrupted, and he cut himself off immediately, worried that he had just blown everything. She smiled at him once more, "It's a date."
And then she got up and walked away with a small wave and a "see ya later."
Jack grinned stupidly after her.
"You have a date with Sierra?" Miko demanded incredulously, wrinkling her nose from where she sat in Bulkhead's passenger seat. Jack rested his hands lightly on the Wrecker's steering wheel, trying to make it at least look like he was driving even as he lamented the fact that Arcee was apparently off on a mission with Smokescreen, though Bulkhead had been sparse on the details.
He would've tried to catch a ride with Raf and Bumblebee, but he had seen the yellow and black Autobot already driving away just as he exited the school's front doors. Now, he was stuck with Miko, who unfortunately seemed to be slowly reverting back to her every day self, or rather, a much moodier version of her every day self.
"Yes, Sierra," he replied dryly, frowning, "You know, just the girl I've been trying to impress since…forever. You make it sound like she's a slug."
"What's a slug?" Bulkhead interrupted, causing Jack to jump slightly as the Autobot's deep voice rumbled throughout the interior of the vehicle.
"A really gross slimy thing," Miko told him, and Jack had to roll his eyes at the lack of details in her explanation, opening his own mouth to elaborate, only to have Miko cut across him, "And she's not a slug, but she's boring. And you don't even know her!" The Japanese exchange student turned in her seat and jabbed an accusing finger at his chest as she spoke.
"I've known her since fifth grade," he corrected, and pushed the finger out of his personal space before his features twisted with irritation, "and she is not boring!"
Miko snorted in disbelief, "Uh, yeah, she is. Her entire life revolves around make-up and boys! I thought a guy like you would be more interested in a girl with a personality, a dream! Not a…a…a drone!"
"Hey! Don't call her that!" Jack snapped, leaving behind all pretenses of driving as he twisted in his seat to face her furiously, "What's gotten into you? You were all for me 'beating the bully' and 'getting the girl' a month ago!" He said, with his fingers making air quotes as he spoke.
Miko's face flushed, "That was before!"
"Before what, Miko?"
She didn't answer, instead choosing to huff at him and turn away, gaze focusing on the desert as it passed them by through the window.
Jack sighed and shook his head at her as he settled back in his seat and went back to pretending to drive.
"Are you two…okay?" Bulkhead asked uncertainly after a moment of silence.
"We're fine," they replied unanimously, and then glared at each other briefly before looking away again.
"If you say so," the Autobot replied dubiously, and then fell silent as they approached the base, the rock-face splitting open to admit them.
Jack blinked rapidly to adjust to the sudden darkness of the tunnel, only for them to enter the brightly lit command centre a moment later.
He spotted Arcee standing at the monitors as Bulkhead rolled to a stop, and deduced she must have just gotten back from her mission. Everyone else was standing around the medical berth, where Jack was immensely relieved to see that Optimus was sitting up, fully online and aware, optics focused on the white, green and red mech standing at the foot of the berth as they conversed.
"Wheeljack!"
Miko's squeal of delight nearly shattered Jack's ear-drums as he winced and slapped his hands over his ears. Miko wasted no time in pushing open the door and rushing over to her second-favourite Wrecker, and Jack frowned in disapproval as Wheeljack scooped her up and plopped her on his shoulder with a grin in a single, careless motion. As soon as Jack clambered out, Bulkhead transformed and thundered over—shaking the ground in the process—to give Wheeljack a thump on the shoulder that would have dislodged Miko from her perch if it had been any stronger (making Jack's frown deepen as he followed at a slight jog behind him, ascending the stairs to join Rafael at the railing.)
"Jackie!" Bulkhead exclaimed, "Where've ya been?"
"Around," Wheeljack chuckled, "You're lookin' good, Bulk, how's the recovery?" He sounded almost hesitant as he asked, perhaps acutely aware that he had not bothered to check in even once since he and Miko had taken out Hardshell.
Bulkhead didn't seem to mind—or, if he did, he at least appeared to understand why on some level that the rest of them didn't—because he skipped over the implication Wheeljack left hanging in the air, and eagerly assured the mech that he was back at a hundred percent.
"What's going on?" Jack asked Raf as Bulkhead eagerly began to fill his fellow Wrecker in on all the battles he had been missing out on.
"Optimus sent Smokescreen and Arcee to convince Wheeljack to come back; they were just getting back when Bee and I came in," Raf replied, "I think it was Titania's idea."
Jack frowned thoughtfully, searching the room briefly for the time-traveller. He spotted her leaning against the elevator shaft across from them, not bothering to join in on any of the conversations that were taking place. Instead, she just watched them with an expression that might have been completely closed off if not the barest flicker of something like pain.
Not for the first time, Jack found himself wondering what was going through her mind. He wondered about a lot of things when it came to her, actually. Foremost among them was what she must have been through to make her seem so unapproachable.
He had his suspicions of course; nobody would sacrifice everything they'd ever had in order to change the past unless they stood to gain more than they lost by doing so. That wasn't to mention they already knew the war did not end in their favour, and there was no telling the horrors that surely followed it in her time, or the ones that had to have preceded it in order to bring such an unfavourable end about. But they were just suspicions, never mind the gut instinct telling him the future she came from was one he would never want to see, if the way Optimus, Ratchet, Agent Fowler, and his own mother had been behaving were anything to go by.
He had seen Optimus looking at her with something that he could have sworn was guilt, even more deeply ridden than what he had seen on the Prime's face when Raf was almost killed by Dark Energon. Jack also hadn't missed the hesitating glance Ratchet had sent her the day they finally met her, or the small pause in his words as he did so, back when the whole discussion about time-travel had taken place. It had been as though he had reason to believe his own words about her sanity being intact were not necessarily a guaranteed fact, and Jack had to wonder what could possibly give him that doubt, because it had struck him, at that moment, as not necessarily being time-travel at fault for throwing her mental stability into question in the first place.
At that moment, Titania turned to look at him, and their eyes met. Feeling suddenly embarrassed, as though he had been intruding on something very personal, Jack hastily looked away, pretending to take an interest in Bulkhead and Wheeljack's conversation.
"—blew up Dreadwing with his own bomb in Egypt!" Bulkhead was saying with a chuckle, clearly relaying the results of his last encounter with Megatron's lieutenant, "He'll be out for a while."
Wheeljack's optics brightened at the remark, and his grin seemed too wide for his faceplates to handle, if the slight creak they made was anything to go by.
"Frag, wish I'd been there to see that!" he glanced down at Miko on his shoulder, "Did ya snap any pictures for me?"
The air in the command centre immediately became awkward, and Miko's cheerful disposition deflated as she nervously looked towards the medical berth.
Optimus sat there with an arm lifted above his head as Ratchet welded the last piece of newly-made and painted armour into place over his wound. Noticing the silence, he glanced up, blue optics meeting Miko's gaze. Ratchet didn't even pause in his work, but those in the room could almost feel the anger radiating off of him at the inadvertent reminder.
Miko looked away shame-facedly and mumbled quietly under her breath, "I…I was somewhere else."
Wheeljack glanced between the human and the Prime, scarred lips twisting into a frown as he deduced that their two current states were somehow related.
"Am I missin' somethin'?" He asked, tactlessly as usual.
"Nothing of importance," the Prime rumbled, mercifully dismissing the painful subject, even as Ratchet gave a small scoff in response.
"Right…" Wheeljack furrowed his optic ridges thoughtfully, as though debating the importance for himself, before seeming to decide he would leave it for later, "So, anything I can do for ya Prime? I assume you've got something in mind, after goin' through the trouble of sendin' our femme-friend and a rook to get me."
"We need your assistance with retrieving the last three Iacon relics," Optimus replied, and then winced almost imperceptibly as Ratchet continued with his welds. "As you can see, I am not currently in a condition conducive to assisting my team on the battlefield."
Anyone who knew the Prime well could tell it was a hard thing for him to admit, so it wasn't much of a surprise when Ratchet paused in his welding long enough to glare at Wheeljack when the Wrecker bluntly stated; "Yeah, I noticed."
In response, Wheeljack merely gave the medic a conspiratorial wink, "Nice to see you too sunshine."
There was a brief moment of stunned silence as Ratchet gave the Wrecker a murderous look worthy of Megatron, before Smokescreen and Bulkhead both exploded with laughter, and even Arcee snorted slightly with surprise at the nickname.
"Su-sunshine?" Smokescreen gasped, leaning on Bulkhead's shoulder for balance as he snickered. His snickers abruptly died as he looked up to find that the Hatchet's glare had been turned on him. He winced away from the medic's gaze, and then rubbed nervously at the middle of his faceplate as though chasing away some phantom pain as he slowly began to sidle behind Bulkhead for protection.
As amusing as the scene was, movement from the corner of Jack's eyes drew his attention away from it. He turned to watch as Titania pushed herself away from her leaning position at the wall and walked towards the railing closest to Optimus. He wasn't the only one who noticed.
The Prime turned his head expectantly at her approach while the rest of the Autobots were occupied with Wheeljack's teasing jabs at their medic and Ratchet's threats of soldering all their lip-plates shut.
Jack watched as Titania's steps faltered for a moment as Optimus looked at her, gaze sliding to the side before being forcibly brought back and fixed on the Prime's face. He tilted his head in her direction—perhaps in a sign of support—and her eyes slid past him towards Wheeljack, and suddenly the moment of vulnerable hesitance was gone and she was the cold soldier again.
He watched, wondering at the contrast, as she bent over, pulled off one of her sneakers while leaning against the railing for support, and then straightened, bouncing the footwear up and down in her hand as she narrowed her eyes at the group before her contemplatively.
And then she chucked her shoe right into Wheeljack's face, startling the Wrecker enough to cut him off mid-sentence—"Aw, c'mon sunshine—"—as it bounced off his head and landed on the floor.
He stared down at the shoe with a perturbed frown for a moment before looking up and grunting, unimpressed at the sight of her, while folding his arms across his chassis.
"And who the Pit is this?" he demanded, scrutinizing her with narrowed optics.
Jack was wondering that himself as he felt his jaw fall slightly open at the fact that she had thrown a shoe in the face of a being who could kill her with the flick of a finger if he felt like it. It was…it was such a Miko thing to do.
Titania tossed her hair over her shoulder and stared back at the Wrecker with her chin held high, looking just as unimpressed and—
Jack put that train of thought on pause as he leaned slightly over the railing and squinted as though to get a closer look, and then glanced over at where Miko was sitting on Wheeljack's shoulder. He glanced back to Titania, and then back to Miko once more, stupefied by the realization that had only just occurred to him because the time-traveller was jutting out her chin in the same, stubborn way Miko often did.
Jack rubbed his spontaneously sweaty hands against his jeans and tried to push the suddenly glaringly obvious facial similarities between the two girls out of mind—while simultaneously wondering if anyone else had noticed it, and feeling an unexplainable pit of dread in his gut because of it—as he focused on Titania's words.
"I," she began, "am Titania, and I'm from the future."
For a long moment after her declaration, there was silence, but then Wheeljack chuckled deeply.
"Right, and I'm the Fallen," he chuckled again at his own joke, only to pause when he realized no one else was laughing. They were all staring at him in silence, expressions serious—and both Ratchet and Arcee with narrowed optic-ridges—and so his chuckling subsided into uncertain silence as his optics darted from face to face, searching for support he wouldn't find, before turning back to Titania with a mildly stupefied expression, "You're serious."
"Very serious," Titania replied, brows angling sharply downwards as she narrowed her eyes at him and folded her arms over her chest, "I don't feel like explaining myself again though, so I'll give you the short version. Autobots lose the war, the world dies, humanity is on the brink of extinction, and I am here to make sure that doesn't happen this time around. Any questions?"
Wheeljack's mouth was slightly optics brightly lit as his processor worked to comprehend everything she had just said. He turned to glance at Bulkhead, who only gave him a grave nod, and a nudge on the shoulder (causing Miko to emit a quiet gasp before she regained her precarious hold), communicating something to him that the rest of them couldn't hope to interpret.
It seemed to be some unspoken signal, as Wheeljack's visage grew grim, scars around his lip-plates looking fierce as he pursed them tightly. His optics glowed bright as he turned to look back at Titania with an evaluating gaze, as though scrutinizing the soul within her tiny, fleshy body.
He took a moment, then nodded as though satisfied with what he saw before he finally replied, cracking his knuckles with a growl.
"Just one, kid. Which Con do you want me to wreck first?"
Okay, anonymous review time (and I apologize if there were any signed reviews I didn't respond to, I often lose track of who I've replied to and who I haven't)
Blueeyes: I'm glad you're enjoying it, and I hope this chapter wasn't a disappointment for you.
Doodlesnoodles: I'm glad you liked the Titania/Ratchet interaction last chapter. I personally think that, even if he were "redeemed," Megatron still wouldn't have a lot of patience for anyone he doesn't respect...as for whether or not it was on behalf of humanity, well, true or not, he'd still tell you it was only because the senator was annoying. ;)
LadyBarricade: It's relieving to hear you think Ratchet was in character last chapter! I totally agree with you too. Megatron dying is as cliché as Optimus' repeated death and resurrections. It's like they're trying to out-resurrect each other so they can go "Ha! I came back more times than you did!" Near-death experiences are okay, but repetitive actual death and resurrection? It's the one thing that really annoys me about the franchise. As for Starscream, I actually thought he was sincere about joining the Autobots (about his motives for doing so anyway, can't say he would've changed much), but his chance at redemption was then shattered. Plus, it kind of seems like he has at least some vague sense of questionable honour since he spared Arcee that one time when he didn't have to. His fate is still up in the air at the moment, pardon the pun. I agree with the theory that Megatron has some residual brotherly attachment for Optimus, and that his resentment largely stems from the fact that Optimus is not Orion, at least not in his mind.
To the Three Guests Who Vote For Redemption: I will mentally log your votes if you don't have an account, if you do, I'd love to see the numbers for Redemption on the poll jump up :D
That being said, the poll is still open, though I may close it somewhere in the next three or four chapters. Go vote! ...Er, please?
