TTWI: Kay. Chapter five. Greeaat…
Ugh.
First thing I wanna point out, is that this chapter gets a lil confusing. I'm hoping y'all get it, because it honestly ain't that complicated, and the last thing I wanna do is, ya know, explain everything in a freakin' author's note of all things.
Actually, the rest I'll put in the end note, I don't want it clogging up the beginning. Please at least take the time to skim over it, I think it's fairly important..?
I'm actually kinda liking this chapter, so expect me to sound a lil less grumpy? Maybe? Actually no, don't expect it, the last thing I wanna do is place expectations upon myself.
Sorry not sorry this was a lil late, especially since it's shorter than usual. This was just, I mean, not that uh, god, how do I say this? It was a more important chapter, even though it was slower than the rest in a way.
Disclaimer: Reader runs the risk of growing bored in this chapter. Also there's the thing about me not bein' affiliated to AOE or Transformers and their owners/whatever in any way..?
. . .
Samantha wanted something to distract her for the time being, and the sunset had actually done a good job. Until the door banged open, and an exasperated Tessa stormed out.
Sam was "safely" resting on a different wall of the small building, but still ducked her head a little. She wasn't anti-social by any means, (not the personality she had adopted for her visit to Earth at least), but… Well, she didn't really have any excuses for being a coward.
And that seriously pissed her off.
She despised being at fault. She despised not being able to excuse any action of hers that she was not particularly proud of. So what to do about the tension between herself and the humans?
She exhaled sharply and held her head a tad higher. She'd tear that tension to shreds. She'd never been babied in her long life, and she couldn't expect it now. With that in mind, she squared her shoulders and braced herself.
As expected, Tessa noted Sam's absence, and walked around a little. The blonde turned her head left and right, raising her hand to shield her eyes from sunlight. "...Sam?"
Not being able to see Sam from her point of view, Tessa's brow furrowed. The girl started to act a little panicky, and began to speed walk around the building. "Sam?" She picked up her pace as she rounded a corner. "Sa-?"
Tessa stopped herself too late, and found herself blocked by Sam's outstretched palm. Sam had visibly winced when Tessa's lower neck had come into abrupt contact with Sam's hand, but the secluded girl made no sign of pulling her hand away. Tessa was startled, but quickly took a step back.
Sam slowly let out what little breath she had, and let her hand return to the warmth of her pocket. She shivered, but being in the sunlight had held any teeth-chattering at bay.
Tessa leaned against the wall in a similar fashion as Sam. Now, Sam didn't have much peripheral vision with the huge shades and hoodie, but when she heard Tessa begin to mutter "I'm sorry", she slightly turned to her.
"Don't," she interrupted, voice graty. She yearned for water, but she'd deal with that later. "It's whatever. 'Sorry time's over."
Her cracked lips quirked upward. She glanced at Tessa again, noticing her wide eyes. "Chill the fuck out, man.." Sam took in a breath to compensate for her sudden "chattiness". "It's not like I'm fuckin' mute er some shit… Just…" she held the side of her head. "Just tired." She tilted her head back cautiously, so as to not bang it on the wall. "Like all o' them in there, 'm sure." Sam let some tension leave her battered body. "You included."
Tessa looked like she wanted to freak out, but Sam's words rang true with her. Tessa's small shoulders sagged, and she let herself fully lean back on the wall, some old paint chipping off with her movement.
"Yeah… I guess…"
Sam smirked. "It'd also explain why you're so moody." Sam caught Tessa's expression of indignation and huffed. " 'm jokin'," she defended herself, smiling a little.
Tessa's hunched shoulders slumped again, and a smile of her own soon graced her features. For some reason, it quickly disappeared.
"I-" Tessa cut herself off, though she looked like something was bothering her. "How-how old are you?"
Receiving no answer, she tried again. "I'm nineteen."
Sam gave her a questioning look, but didn't speak. Tessa answered her unasked question anyhow. "I… haven't gone to college yet. Decided to just, take a break, first." She reached up to quickly brush a finger against the side of her nose, then turned to Sam. "...You…?"
Sam's eyebrows scrunched up, and she scratched her cheek. "Lemme see," she whispered almost inaudibly, trying to do the math. "Human age, uh…" It was a long stretch of silence as the girl tried to do the mental math, struggling to map out her timeline.
A small sigh finally escaped her moments before she spoke. "Older 'n you.." That was… both a lie, and not.
Tessa was very obviously unsatisfied with the response she got, but let it go for the moment. "...From?"
Sam half shrugged, and regretted it, a sharp sliver of pain shooting down her arms. "Why."
Tessa seemed put off by all the spurning of her questions, but persisted. "Doesn't sound like you're from 'round here." She repeatedly bounced her lower back against the wall.
Sam scoffed, wanting to shoot back that none of them sounded like they were from around there, but refrained. There was another moment of deliberation before her hoarse voice broke the silence. "West."
Tessa nodded slowly, and her face revealed two emotions: realization, and suspicion.
Sam found herself being stared at intently for a moment by Tessa's now dark eyes.
"...Sam…" Tessa took a deep, shuddering breath. One that Sam wished to attribute to the growing cold, but she knew she'd be lying to herself. "Sam."
Begrudgingly, Sam grunted her acknowledgement.
Tessa shook her head, suddenly seeming wary. "...How...How was it that… b-back there… in the town… Th-the bomb… You… survived..?"
Sam had to avoid the question, or deny its implications. But she, she had the urge to laugh, with a smug "Yeah, so?" leaving her mouth. For a reason that made her sick to her stomach.
As always, Sam won out. Sam, who just had to reassure everyone that she was harmless, and had absolutely no idea how it came to be that she stood before them, alive, while Tessa's and Cade's lifelong friend did not.
Because if Lucas had been killed, surely Sam should have been as well, no?
However, as often was the case, Sam's needs and her own needs met in the middle. Thus, instead of kindly steering the conversation elsewhere, or laughing in Tessa's unsuspecting face, Sam let a subtle smirk flash across her face before simply ignoring the insinuation.
She shook her head, as if to rid it of her conflicting thoughts, and realized how dark it had gotten. The sun wasn't out anymore, and streaks of blue and purple colored the sky. Some of the brighter stars had become visible, and the rising moon was thinly veiled by a few stray clouds.
"...It's late." Sam pushed herself off the wall with her elbows and began walking around the corner. "Try ta get some rest," she threw over her shoulder, making fun of the fact that no one would be able to rest easily that night.
Tessa gave the back of Sam's head an uneasy glance before following in Sam's slow footsteps. They reached the door, but Samantha walked past it. Tessa reached out to grab Sam, but quickly pulled her arm back. She only gave Sam a look before holding the flimsy door open for her.
Still, not one to be so easily subdued, Tessa called out. "Sam!"
Sam didn't want to talk anymore. Her throat couldn't handle much more, even if she had wanted to. Nevertheless, her footsteps paused.
Tessa waited.
After a few moments, Sam looked over her shoulder. Then Tessa spoke.
"Where are you going?"
Sam wasn't sure what to answer. She wanted to say "nowhere", to be left alone for a while, but she wasn't sure whether that would only encourage more prying or not.
"Not far," she assured the teen, her footsteps resuming. She walked into the darkness, slouching when she heard the door finally swing shut.
"Where am I going?" she asked out loud, clearing her throat roughly. "Doesn't matter. 'S long's I'm not cramped up with them. 'Lord' knows I'd lash out at 'em the way I'mgoin'..." She kicked at a stray bottle, and followed its path to kick it again, brows furrowed. "The way we're goin'..." she corrected, her voice a rough, broken whisper.
Embodying two personalities was difficult. One wanted to do one thing, and the other… another. One kind, sympathetic, caring, and the other, not so much.
She had realized that was the reason behind her attachment to the Autobot from several nights ago. She had zero memories of him, that was a sure thing. But Sam… Sam, though no better off in the memories department, had felt pity.
The sympathy, the caring, the sorrow…
They had been Sam's.
Not hers.
Sam stopped kicking the bottle. The frustration pent up inside her, however, caused her to give it as strong a kick as she could manage, sending it noisily skidding across the dirt and sand of the desert.
"All fer the sake of making this easier. And look at what it got me..."
She cleared her throat, knowing coughing would only make the scratchiness worse. Raising the sunglasses, her garnet eyes wearily scanned the darkness. Her second hand reached up to rub frustratedly at her twitching left eyelid.
A short distance away from her was a small boulder, and she deemed it her seat. After closing the small gap between it and herself, she sat down on it, even if the face of the rock wasn't as smooth as she would have liked.
An hour or so went by. The purple-ish sky turned black, the stars becoming fully visible. The occasional zephyr that had prickled her skin became a constant gust that had Sam constantly sweeping stray hairs from her face, reminding her of how lucky she'd been that it hadn't fallen out. A shivering mess, she still refused to return to the service station. It wasn't as if there was food there or anything. Sam got to wondering how the humans were coping with their lack of dinner, but she replaced it with concern about herself.
What she would do for a glass of water… Or an apple, a grape, anything to moisten her dry mouth and parched throat.
Not much, actually. She wasn't ready to go up to a cactus and try and fail to hack at it in such darkness. She'd slice off a good amount of fingers before she got to any of the moist insides of the plant. She'd gone a year without water, she could handle what was likely to be only a few more hours.
But what to do in the meantime? Were she in the right mental and physical state, she'd have been itching to do something to rid herself of the boredom of waiting out in the dark. She had tried to stargaze, but it had only reminded her of home, so she'd stopped.
For hours, her mind did what it did best: wander. But even that got boring after a while. She could only wonder about worms for so long, and her curiosity about how it'd be like to have fur faded fast.
Instead she'd hummed a tune to herself, the sound cracking at certain points due to the strain on her vocal chords. It wasn't really a song of any sort, just prolonged notes and sounds to keep her mind busy. She couldn't handle stillness. Calm? Sometimes. Still? Fat chance.
She was considering attempting to doze off, despite the lightening sky, when she'd felt a rumble travel through the ground. Quickly, too quickly, her head snapped left and right in search of the cause. The abrupt movement had made her dizzy, and she rubbed her temples to try to mitigate the effect, lifting her sunglasses in the process.
A large square shadow came into her view, and dull, yellow headlights flickered on in the distance.
"...Ah, crap…"
Optimus was back, and in the early hours of the morning. Sam turned her back to him, hoping in vain that he would bypass her hunched form. Suddenly a little self conscious, Sam straightened and looked straight ahead.
The rumbling intensified, but she could tell the truck was slowing down.
"Yup. 's comin' for me. Great.."
As much as she wished to, she didn't take off. She simply sat there on her rock, waiting. Her curiosity was getting the better of her. Again.
Suddenly, she heard the hiss of the truck behind her, and her body was suddenly shrouded by dull light. She didn't like it. She felt like she had been caught doing something she shouldn't.
Even so, she sat, and listened in begrudging admiration as Optimus transformed behind her. As much as the Transformers' existence had been shoved in her face for the past year, she simply could not get over that fact that they did, in fact, exist. She hated to admit it, but they fascinated her. In a sense, she was similar, but still, they were a whole different race of huge sentient robots and when she'd registered this fact she'd wanted to freak out.
Surprisingly, this transformation was quieter than the last, and next he was on his knee beside her, and wasn't she uncomfortable. He blocked a large amount of the cold wind, so there was that.
The silence was killing her, but she didn't speak. She could just make out the large shadow of Optimus' arm reaching toward her, yet she sat still as she could.
Strangely, she found something being held out to her. She leaned back at first, but she let herself slowly tilt her body forward until she could squint at the small object in the robot's huge hand.
An apple.
Samantha blinked at it behind her sunglasses, questioning eyes as red as the apple in front of them. She slowly turned to gaze up at the arctic blue eye lights far above her.
The bot those eyes belonged to shifted his hand, trying to bring Sam's attention back to the food offering.
It worked. Samantha's stare fell upon the fruit once again, but she didn't reach out for it. "...An apple?" she asked instead, and she would've slapped herself for how small she sounded. She looked up and saw the two lights bob up and down a couple times. The inner corners of her eyebrows scrunched up as she warily retrieved the small red fruit.
Momentarily, she marveled at how the apple didn't have any noticeable bruises despite having been handled by such large hands. Optimus must have been careful.
Another thought occurred to her then.
"How did y-?" Sam began to ask, quite a bit louder than usual as excitement got the better of her. She stopped herself and let her shoulders sag once again, her emerging smile dying. She told herself it was the other personality that'd made her so giddy, but she wasn't sure.
Dejectedly, she held the apple back out. "Can't eat this."
"Wh-"
"Teeth." She pointed. "Brittle."
A sigh, and the apple was gone.
An all too familiar emotion nagged at her: the feeling of letting someone down. She didn't know why, but it did, and feeling guilty never failed to piss her off.
Without warning, something else was held before her. It was clear, and made a sloshing sound. As if the apple wasn't enough. Sam was getting fidgety, extremely uncomfortable with all this… giving, on Optimus' part. But it was a bottle of water. Samantha wasn't about to just toss it aside.
It took some effort, but Sam uncapped the dusty bottle. A single drop stuck to the cap, and dripped onto her finger with her movement. The sensation came as a shock.
The bottle was half empty, but Sam disregarded it as she pressed it to her cracked lips and tilted her head back. The water was gone before she knew it, yet she held it in place for a second longer. She finally pulled it away, letting out a sigh of both satisfaction and want.
She stared at the container in her hand in wonder, as if she couldn't believe that she had actually drunk. As grateful as she was, she wasn't one to linger on such thoughts, and she let it slip from her gloved hands. It landed with a hollow clatter, and the gravel at her feet hissed as she moved her foot to crush it.
The nice part of Samantha, the one that wasn't truly part of her, wouldn't let her do all this without somehow acknowledging Optimus' favor. She looked up at him, her hood hiding some of her face, but Optimus didn't miss her smile.
"Thanks." She didn't want to say it, but at least she meant it. What she did want to do was question his actions, but she obeyed her common sense for once and refrained from doing so.
Optimus gave her yet another nod.
It occurred to Sam to wonder if the Autobot recognized her, or if he could given better lighting and a better look at the atrocity that was her face. If only she could eat. She doubted she'd need much to be able to heal herself. Even that apple would have sufficed, but she wouldn't risk breaking her teeth to eat it. She needed a liquid…
"You're welcome," he finally said, voice a little less gruff.
Sam opened her mouth to speak, no matter how much half of her mind screeched at her not to do so. It turned out, however, that Optimus had not finished his sentence.
"...Samantha."
. . .
TTWI: Man, I'm sorry this is so short, it's at least 1k words below my usual limit, but not only did I not want to be much later, but I also found this was a somewhat fitting place to stop. Cliffhanger? Eh, I don't think so.
(any typos in here? For sure. Pls let me know.)
So, I said I'd continue here from the beginning, so I will.
Second, ya may have noticed I changed some of the info 'bout the story. Ya know, uh, characters, genre, stuff like that.
And the pairing? Yeah, I took that off, too. Not because I decided it's not gonna be in here. I'm fairly sure that there's gonna be somethin in 'ere, but. But. I don't wanna mislead people into reading this who are "looking forward" to like, I dunno, cute shit and fluff and whatnot. I'm not saying there won't be fluff, but, uh, if there is, pretty sure it's gonna be to a smaller degree than most people would like?
I just don't want people proly gettin' mad because there apparently wasn't "enough" romance or something. LIke, "Oh, it wasn't obvious enough" or "It's barely hinted at! They might as well be siblings!"
Not saying y'all are whiners like that, but as much of an asshole that I am, one of the last things I wanna do is have people read through this, thinkin' they're gonna get, like, 50% romance in this story when in actuality it won't be that much. I mean, it might get close? But the romance won't be very… major?
Example, you could say a story has a lot of swearing, because it uses the word "ass" a lot, or "crap" or something. Yet, some other people would consider that like, no swearing at all, or very mild swearing at the most. It all comes down to each reader. It's why I'd like to know (based on the poll? Or pm or
ANYwhere, if y'all are here -mainly- for the ship or not.)
Again, I'm not necessarily saying I was misleading you this whole time. I don't think I was. But I realize that I could proly think this through a lil more.
That basically covered the genre, BUT I still just wanna repeat that no, the change does NOT mean there won't be romance in this between the previously revealed pairing, but I'm just not really into "sap" XD in the first place. So I decided to be a lil safer/general about it.
And finally, though it isn't that big an edit, uh, I changed the fourth character slot from Cade to Tessa. I think, with the fourth chapter, it's a lil obvious why, but at the moment, Tessa has had somewhat of a bigger role, so I decided to put her in the tags instead. Chill.
And if you're doubting me a lot after all this, lemme just say, isn't it better to not have certain features of the story spoiled at first glance? As obvious as it is?
Just.
Whatever…