Notes/ Thanks for the feedback I got on the last chapter. I really do appreciate it. And this one is later than I wanted.
In answer to a guest review, I don't really have a schedule for updates. I know some writers try to, and I would love to as well, but, yeah not likely. I'm too busy with work and such, and then on top of them I'm just too known for scarping chapters part way through realizing I hate the direction it was going and have a better idea, lol. Nuber of reviews until a new update, makes no difference either. I might update with one, or none, or I end up struggling with the next chapter and not updating for weeks with five.
Another guest review pointed out that Jack might be acting out of character. I had wondered if it was too off for him. Thanks for the constructive criticism on that one. He will be back in the story later on though and hopefully his anger will make more sense. Maybe he just needs to tell his side of the story a little more.
Regarding Soundwave (haha, I'm amazed at how many people seem to like that bot,) I'm not sure how far his story will go in this fanfic. (obviously it's much more Knockout and Arcee's story…. With increasing subplots.) BUT… I've been kicking around the idea of starting on a second, related story when this one is finally done. A second part that may focus more on Soundwave as a main character. If anyone would read that, let me know, lol.
The expected shipload of returning refugees, had arrived just as planned, sometime in the early afternoon. And the Autobot base was currently calming down again, after the chaos of briefings, and instruction, medical checks and minor treatment for anyone that needed it, and a general mess of bots everywhere – and most of them lost.
Arcee, insistent as ever on working despite displeasure from both a trusted senior medic and her own bondmate over it, was standing near the worktable set up along the far wall of the downstairs recreation room. She was chatting far more causally now with any bot still left at the base that needed any further assistance or information, and handing out the left of the data pads for the pile of them, to those that had not yet gotten theirs. She was also happily holding Takeoff, a small youngling that had been passed hurriedly to her, moments before by a hurried carrier who had struggled to keep a hold of him while he signed arrival documents.
"It gives a wonderful sense of hope, doesn't it," Knockout said thoughtfully, while he sat rolling his cart forwards and back slightly. On his lap sat Takeoff's twin, Runway, who he held onto carefully with his right arm while he drove with his left hand. "To see two this young..."
"A couple of little playmates for ours before we know it," Arcee answered, with a laugh and a pleased smile as she nodded in agreement with her mate's words. She took the pad of signed documents back from the twins' carrier, and still holding the youngling perfectly, she tossed it into her storage compartment. Her compartment was becoming very full of pads and pens and even a few empty energon containers the still confused refugees had been handing back to her.
So few new sparks had been created and carried on Cybertron in centuries. The war, and then the eventual launching away of the allspark, had seen to that. But that hardly meant there was no new life at all, created anywhere. Arcee and Knockout's young one, expected soon, would be the first to come to life on her own home world after the war. But there were more over the years, born on refugee ships, to bonded pairs that did the best the could to raise a new generation, doing the best they could while the ships sailed the stars. Many of the ship-born younglings were young adults by now. But there were a handful of little ones too, and among those newest created sparks, these two were the newest yet to land.
"So, we're really going to trust former 'cons with the next generation of life on our planet now?" a bot demanded arrogantly behind the little group. Arcee turned quickly to see that the comment had clearly been made by Sideswipe, a young Autobot who had arrived back to base that afternoon with the returning ship. "That guy's got optics as red as I've ever seen."
The red painted young warrior may have been Autobot by loyalty and sworn affiliation. But that hardly meant Arcee had always gotten along with the bot. He was well known for being hotheaded. And his reputation for letting trouble find him in many forms had followed him long after he had departed from Cybertron.
"Ha. Maybe we should be talkin' a minute about the risk of having little ones so close to a bot that thinks he knows it all, except when to keep his mouth shut." Wheeljack, busily looking at the jammed lock on a refugee's traveling case nearby, commented without looking up.
"Any informed and not completely ignorant and judgmental bot, would actually be looking for faction symbols and not so much at optic colors," said Speedbreaker with a self assured smile. She sat at the far end of the worktable, having voluntarily worked the afternoon on the task of registering the newly returned bots for their household utility hook ups. "I've been talking lately to some of the much older bots. It sounds like optic color was never a faction thing. At least not entirely. Why would it be? That could never make any sense anyway. According to the old bots, it may have had more to do with the cities each of the factions recruited from early on in the great war. We do tend to think red or blue, probably because those colors are the most common, and from there we assign a probable faction. But what the bots with neither color? The purples, yellows and greens?"
"Like I care what some know it all, wanna be fact finder, neutral has to say," Sideswipe answered no one in particular, while he shot defiant glares around the room. "We all know full well that bot's a 'con defector. And I don't give a frag about either optic colors or faction symbols. I'm not not just going to stand around and tell refugees it's somehow suddenly okay to be trusting..."
Bulkhead stood close to the closed sliding rooms of the rec room, where he'd been standing around much of the afternoon, discussing construction projects with anybot that wanted the info. And trying at the same time to actively recruit new builders looking for work. As the ranting from the angry and increasing disruptive young warrior grew louder, he turned to look toward the back of the room, and he shook his head for a second.
"Haven't you got anywhere to be, other than down here trying to make a scene, where clearly no one else is looking for any trouble or an uproar?" He asked the younger bot pointedly. And when several others, both Autobots and refugees alike, nodded their heads and mumbled in subtle agreement with the big bot, Sideswipe only shook his head, and spend a moment wordlessly huffing before he simply left the room and let the door shut behind him.
"Thanks for the baby juggling help," the twin's carrier, a young blue and green painted bot, who was quite clearly a flier, said with a grateful look and chuckle of laughter. He took each twin back one at a time and balanced one on each of his bent elbows.
"Not a problem at all," Arcee smiled back at once. "Thanks for letting us play with them. You will be able to find your away to your housing assignment alright?"
When the young flier nodded confidently, and left the rec room to head straight for the lift, Arcee turned back to stand facing her mate. And she grinned brightly.
"A practice opportunity for you," she said with a happy laugh. "See you can certainly still use your hand control safely and drive without dropping a little one." Knockout had expressed his growing worry about exactly that more than once in recent days, as Arcee's due date grew close.
"Just two bad those youngling twins are fliers though," Knockout said. He sat still on his cart, looking up and grinning a silly grin, before he mused with clear and obvious humor, "to grow up learning how to fly… to never get to feel the roadways under their wheels…"
"You seriously never wanted to fly?" Speedbreaker questioned. She looked over at him, from the chair she still occupied at her now empty post.
At that, Knockout's optics opened wide enough that the look on his face-plate as almost comical. It was obviously only by instinct brought on purely by nearly panicked aversion, that he rolled the cart backward with his left hand, while the right waved stiffly in front of him.
"No, no, no," he answered firmly, while his teammates laughed, almost unable to help it. "Firm ground under me at all times... good thing. Very good thing!"
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"Arcee," A bot called behind her, as she walked a corridor alone, making her way toward the living quarters she shared with her mate. She resisted the urge to sigh and even groan out loud, as soon as Sideswipe rounded a corner, after leaving the common room, and proceeded to hurry after her.
"Can I speak with you a moment?" the younger bot asked hurriedly.
"Respectfully..." he promised in under a second, and after she had not quite as successfully managed to suppress another groan of dread.
Arcee was tired, even if it was still early evening. She certainly had no plans of resting long But the short nap she had been on her way to take, not only sounded good to her then, but felt entirely necessary. Still duty came first, and though she may not have liked the young warrior much at all, it was hardly professional in her rank, to rudely brush him off, no matter how much she may just have wanted to. She turned to walk instead in the opposite direction without any real place in mind that she actually wanted to go, and settling instead for a walk for the simple sake of it.
"Walk with me," she said. Her hand gestured to him to do so.
"I took some time to read over and review some recent files today, after Bulkhead told me off...and I fully accept and understand by the way, after some thinking about it, that I probably deserved it."
Arcee gave a firm nod of her head before she commented almost a little too shortly, "our team is small and we all know how to work together well. We don't typically see a need for anyone to be publicly shouting our frustrations and making an all out scene about it. We prefer to discuss these things quietly like adults in private."
"Fine," Sideswipe answered with a bold shrug of his shoulders. "That's absolutely fair enough. I get that I was wrong to shout in the rec room like I did. That's why I decided to talk to you now instead."
Arcee admitted, even if silently and only to herself, that she was uncharacteristically in a strangely bad mood. She was running on a short fuse, too close to wrongfully snapping at anybot that got in her way. She was tired of course and in need of some quick recharge. But that was hardly an excuse for it. Slowly she made herself smile just a bit at the young bot, and forced away the need to snap with little reason. The young bot had admitted to his own mistake. And she knew that continued verbal discipline would hardly have been fair.
"Thank you," she said, meaning it and evening out her tone still more. She continued her aimless walk through the corridors with the new arrival walking beside her. "So, what's this about files then?"
"I've been reading over some recent records," Sideswipe explained quickly. He got straight back to the point. "Knockout is not the only defector currently living on this base. You've got Soundwave too? He's been released from lock up status awhile back and has living quarters in here?"
"Yes," Arcee sighed right along with her answer. The young bot was beginning to shout again, and even though it was obvious he was at least trying to keep his temper under control, it only served to aggravate her all over again.
"Third in command under the most feared tyrannical ruler in Cyberton's history. And you're just going to let him peacefully defect from his faction? He's just some bot now? Just another Cybertronian with a clean slate and a future?"
Arcee's already unusually bad mood, gave way to outright anger at the young warrior as he let the volume of his voise rise the more he shouted at her in what she considered to be blatant disrespect. And for a moment, it was all she could do not to either shout right back, waning him to watch his mouth, or to simply turn and stomp off the other way in her own spurt of head shaking and mumbling under intakes. For another moment she only stared the young Autobot in the optics, challenging him wordlessly to just to dare to continue on with his yelling at a carrying bot in a testy mood, and see what he'd get for his trouble. But as she continued to stare at his optics, she slowly began to see the bewildered confusion, behind the young bot's defiance.
He was just another young soldier, not unlike Smokescreen, or Bumblebee or countless more still scattered over endless space and trying to get home. Young Autobots that barely knew a life at all, outside of war and hate, of factions and loyalties. This young bot, was just one more, like so many others, born to a world already at what, made to choose a faction, hating the other side, all without knowing what exactly what it was he fought for, or what exactly it was that he hated in the first place. A world where a bot could be so much more than his faction, was a place he did not even understand.
"Anyone deserves a chance to start over," Arcee said simply. The anger and frustration that had been steadily building left at once and she smiled at the kid. A genuine smile this time.
"It looks like Knockout's been around here a while. Apparently he's never betrayed the Autobots. Besides, he was just a medic. Fine. Whatever. I'll leave him alone. But why exactly should anyone trust Soundwave as far as any of us can throw him. He could murder any of of us in our recharge without blinking an optic. He's… Soundwave! We should be locking up every good for nothing 'con we can catch, and throwing the keys into the smelting pit. Let those bots rust in their cells for everything they did..."
"It isn't nearly that simple. This is a new world now. We can't rebuild it on anger and revenge. That won't work. Besides, every bot alive today deserves a chance to seek their own redemption. A chance for us all to just be simple bots again and learn to work together… that's exactly what Optimus Prime would have wanted for Cybertron. Soundwave wanted the war to end just as much as we did. So many of the 'cons were just as tired of the fighting as we were. And I'm not sure that most of them knew exactly what it was we were fighting for in the end anymore either."
Still walking the corridor and maintaining his steady pace beside his follow Autobot, Sideswipe looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he smiled slightly with the thought of the future, before his optics took on that same confused and baffled look again.
"What about Starsceam?" He asked, after another moment.
"What about him?" Arcee questioned back at once. She laughred very slightly, but the look she gave the younger bot reveled just how little she knew exactly what it was he meant to ask in his simple question.
"Are we giving him the same clean slate and a chance at redemption too?"
"That's..." Arcee began to answer slowly, without a real clue how she should or even could answer that question. "That's far more complicated. I wish I could say I believed he himself wanted that. But in any case, our duty to Cybertron will be to rid society of any bot that continues to interfere with our goal of lasting peace."
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It was still very early in the morning. Arcee sensed that with no doubt at all, before she even opened her optics. When she finally forced herself to do so through all of her lingering tiredness, a pair of wide open red optics, met hers.
"How long have you been awake?" She questioned slowly. She raised her head a little, only after realizing she was mumbling nearly inaudibly into her bondmate's shoulder panel.
Knockout considered a second before his face-place showed a tiny hint of a smile at her.
"Couldn't be more than a couple of minutes." He mumbled an answer, so clearly just as tired as she was and possibly far more so. But at least he managed to smile even if barely. And Arcee, taking a decent lesson from him, made herself do so too.
"Bad recharge last night," Knockout said, still mumbling his words a little, as Arcee shifted herself again so that she could sit up on their recharge station with her legs straight out in front of her. She nodded her conformation.
Last night had been a terrible night for the pair, as some nights simply just were. They must have each been in recharge for only several moments, before Knockout had drifted away into flashbacks or some terrible nightmare, and had quickly, and quite unintentionally woken Arcee back up again, with his screaming in terror at something she could never see or understand. She'd decided not to wake him up, since he stopped again quickly enough. And for a short while he was fine again. But it was only a short time before he was trembling badly, with tears pouring from his closed optics in the darkness and refusing to fully wake up, even when she frantically shook him.
For him to roll himself over to one side, took some conscious desire to move, and a fair amount of voluntary physical effort on his part. It was hardly something he could simply do just barely awake and barely trying to. So, acting instinctively, doing only what made even a hint of logical sense to do, she'd managed at some point in the night to put both her arms over top of his frame, hold lightly over the right side of his body and pull him toward her, so that he rolled into a new position, laying on one side and slowly drifting away from the dream as she lay against him again. The pair had recharged a short while then, but it was only a matter of time before he began screaming again, louder than before, coolant tears still streaming down his face-plate in the darkness, while he struggled in his confusion to shove her away from him with a barely functional left arm and a right that shook violently in the rough direction of something he was convinced he saw in front of him.
"You okay?" Arcee asked. She gave another little smile. And instead of moving to get up, though she felt like she ought to, she flopped over flat onto her back and straightened her legs, taking a second to simply enjoy stretching a bit.
"I… I'm fine now," Knockout answered slowly. At first his voice sounded almost too hesitant. But slowly the tiny smile on his face brightened and his optics showed that he meant it.
"Do you remember much of last night?" Arcee asked slowly.
"Barely," Knockout shook his head hesitantly, and said no more about it. Slowly, cautiously and clearly appearing himself to lack any real motivation to move, he flung his right arm back up over the side of his frame, forced his body into as much of a turn as possible, and rolled onto his back, steadying himself on a bent right elbow. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Arcee answered, and she really did mean it. With a slight roll of her optics and a little groan under her intakes, she mumbled, "My bad recharge last night was hardly all your fault anyway. I would have been up in the night regardless."
"Has our newspark started to keep you awake?"
"I… I think so. I've never carried before, so I don't know what it's supposed to feel like this late..." Arcee moved a little to lay closer to her mate again. "I feel something almost constantly now inside my spark chamber. It just fluttered a bit at first. Last night though it was more than just a little steady fluttering..."
Knockout didn't say anything. But he was looking at her intently, his optics telling her without any words at all to go on.
"I'm sure I can feel the little spark spinning in there now. It's the strangest feeling ever."
"The little spark is about as big as it's ever going to be now as a first frame youngling," Knockout explained with a tone of sympathetic understanding. He moved to pull her closer to him with his functional arm. "Her movement will have slowed a little now, but she's still moving fast in that same constant spin. It'll be causing a fair bit of pressure in your chamber by now."
"It is," Arcee said. "And I can only imagine it'll just get worst from here."
"Not as much as you might think actually. She's not going to get much bigger if she grows at all. And the speed of her motion will slow down more yet."
"Just matter then of waiting it out… resting and waiting for her to be born… Hard to believe we're this far now so fast."
"Time certainly can fly."
For a moment neither of them said anything more. Arcee moved again on the recharge station, so that she could lay tightly pressed against her mate's body armor. And for a coupe of moments she just stayed like that, silently limbs growing tense, and her face hidden against her mate's red shoulder panel.
"Arcee?" Knockout said, his tone clearly questioning, when another long moment went by without her moving or saying a word. Hesitantly he moved his arm away from her to see if she would move. And slowly she did, she shift if his position, causing her to lift her head a little to look at him in concern.
He saw the strange and sudden look of nervous anxiety in her optics as soon as she looked up. And she knew she had never had a real hope of hiding that from him for a second.
"Please talk to me," he urged gently. "Arcee's what the matter?"
Arcee moved again so that she could sit up on the recharge station. For a second she just sat looking down at her mate while he lay looking up at her with concern on his face-plate. He looked just as half way to helpless as ever. But still in his optics she saw his respect and concern and love for her. His look reminded her just how, while he was still so limited in just how much he could do, he still liked to listen to her. He wanted her to talk to him. His silence and intently staring barely blinking optics reminded her of that much.
"The closer we get now, the more nervous I get," she said, speaking honestly. One of her hands reached for one of his, and he reached at once to take it.
"What about?" he questioned slowly. His optics still showed such intent interest and true concern. In that second she recalled a time the two of them had been more than delighted with the idea of killing either other with a charged energon staff and a pair of hand blasters, over possession of ridiculous relics, and a simple difference of opinion taught over years of warfare. She reflected on just how hard it was to believe that either one of them were really the same two bots anymore.
"Parenthood scares me a bit," she said slowly, and managed a tiny chuckle through her still growing anxiety. "A tiny helpless bot, depending on us for everything… to meet her every need, to teach her to be good, whats right and what's wrong... I know how to fight, and shoot, command troops and plan out battle strategy. But none of that ever taught me how to relate to a child. What if I just don't love her enough?"
"You love her enough already," Knockout said with understanding. "We both do. And she's not even an independently existing spark yet. I can only imagine that feeling will be so much more when we finally see that little frame take on it's colors and start to move. The first time we hear her cry… or laugh..."
When Arcee's optics began to fill with coolant tears, Knockout pulled her toward him as well as he could with his one strong enough arm, gently urging her to lay back down beside him, before she could stare down at the covers on the recharge station.
"Just thinking more and more about the whole process of spark separation, is making me nervous," she said. Her voice was quiet as she lay against him again. "And then I feel bad for that, because I feel like that's ridiculous and silly."
"It's not silly."
"I know there's been cases anywhere in history of newsparks dying out when they should have merged into their first frames instead. Carriers have offlined too..."
"Well that's not exactly commonplace," Knockout said quickly. But still he knew he could never lie to her, and the simple omition of detail was little better than lying. "Yes, there are things that can and do go very wrong. But they generally don't. And Ratchet is just too good and stubborn and committed of a medic to fail to save either one of you if he needed act fast."
"If something did go wrong.." Arcee said, moving to look him in the optics again. Her voice was entirely serious, and tried hard through the look on her face-plate to tell him just how important this was to her. "I know it's almost impossible for something to go wrong. But almost impossible is not a guaranteed 'never going to happen, so let's not even talk about this.' If something terrible did happen... If I was the one in seven-thousand carriers who went offline in spark separation, or anytime really, for any reason..." Arcee paused a moment and moved to place her hand over her spark chamber, in a vague gesture indicating the presence of the newspark. Her optics went on staring, intent and unblinking at her mate. "Knockout, please say you would love her more than enough for both of us, raise her to be strong and smart and as funny as you are. Please say that you would always do your best..."
"Of course I would," Knockout smiled his genuine assurance. And that was enough to make Arcee smile back at him again. Through the connection she shared with him, she sensed that he did not want to simply agree like that. She knew that instead he wanted to assure with with stats and facts and figures and piles of complex medical terminology, that her concern was all but unfounded. But it was not necessary and she knew that he knew that. The simple agreement from him, made her anxiety lessen and then quickly fade entirely. And she knew he sensed that too.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled, flopping over s that she could lay on her back again. She looked up toward the ceiling with another groan under her intakes, and shook her head a little. "I know I'm being ridiculous. I'm just neurotic, and moody. and terrible to deal with..."
"And tired partly because of my bad night, stressed from working when you should be resting far more, probably tired of carrying... and still just as beautiful as ever by the way, regardless." Knockout grinned his increasing familiar grin.
Slowly, and beganning to smile again at him at him, calmer and assured, Arcee sat up on the recharge station, and then finally moved to stand up on the floor beside it.
"Do you wanna sit up?" she asked. Her optics moved slightly toward the grab bars that had been recently installed at the side and above the recharge station. He was becoming quite capable now of using the bars to sit himself up on the recharge station, just as long as he still had a little bit of help.
He nodded slowly, clearly seeking his own motivation to actually get up. And Arcee reached for the overhead bar, and pulled it hard on it's sliding track, so that she could then lock it into place with a firm tug, into a position above his arms. He reached up easily enough with his right arm, held onto the bar with his hand, and as soon as Arcee had carefully moved his left arm, so that he could grab the bar beside him, somewhat awkwardly wedging his hand under it and grabbing it as well as he could, he was able to pull himself up to sitting.
Holding the bar now in front of him with his right hand, and the one mounted beside the recharge station awkwardly with the left, he held himself up in a seated position with both legs straight in front of him, the right bent slightly at the knee for comfort and balance. He stayed that way, obviously happy enough to be upright now that he'd mananged to get there, while Arcee hurried to the wash station to bring him a wash rag as she'd taken to doing each morning.
"Do you think Starscream would ever defect, and mean it?" She questioned slowly, thoughtfully, speaking over the sound of the running water.
For a second, Knockout appeared visibly surprised by her strange question as she peeked around the door to look at him. But then he shook his head, and still holding his balance, he managed a tiny shrugging motion the best way he could. "I don't imagine there's even enough left of the 'cons to even defect from. From what Soundwave tells us…"
"You knew Starscream better than any Autobot," Arcee said with determination. She added a small amount of cleaning solvent to the wet rag, tossed the bottle of the stuff back onto the counter top, and left the wash station again with the rag balled up in her hand. "Do you personally think he might just be capable of real redemption?"
"Arcee? Did something happen? Something to cause this sudden concern over this?"
"Not really. Just… a new arrival was asking questions yesterday. I gave the best answer I could, but it's had me thinking ever since."
"Hmm..." Knockout said thoughtfully, and his look said that he was carefully considering his answer. Still, even while so intently thinking and conversing with her, he did a fine job of holding himself up in his sitting position. His hands still held onto the bars, but it was obvious that was only for the most part, because he did not yet fully trust himself not to fall. With only slight hesitation he carefully let go, so that he could reach for the washrag. "His reputation certainly proceeded him anywhere in the galaxy. He must surely be hated anywhere just as much as Megatron. I used to fear him just as much as I feared Megatron himself. I told you once about an assault against me, involving his prized fighting sword… He was a broken bot, Arcee. Now that I'm away from at all, and have been for a while, I can see, looking back, just how bad it really was. You'd probably laugh if I told you he was actually quite a brilliant bot. Strategy, weapons design, communications… Megatron set him up to fail, made him look stupid just a little bit to often, and taught the troops to laugh when he made a simple mistake, until finally the only thing we ever really noticed were the mistakes and increasingly hair brained screw ups. And then our psychotic leader would corner him in the hall ways drag him away somewhere and take his own rage at the failing war effort out on him with fists and insults, until survival took so much effort that brilliance meant nothing.
"No one knows exactly where Starscream actually came from. You could ask ten 'cons and get fifteen answers. We've got to assume he was recruited helplessly young. There are conflicting rumors… Some bots say he lied about his age after his creators died and joined the cause because he had nowhere to go. Others have said before that Megatron killed his creators and stole him away from his home city before he even got his adult frame, having hand picked a young one to raise as the next leader should he ever be brought down. Either way, it was obvious by the time I got there, that he was only kept alive, to serve as someone to beat on, to blame, and yell at. Someone who had barely lived long enough before the war to have ever learned to fight back."
"The Autobots have tried far more than once to be tolerant of him, to show compassion, to offer to help..." Arcee mumbled out loud, with her emotions in a such a mix that she barely knew if she was supposed to be angry sad, or just indifferent over the whole matter. "Optimus Prime in particular was determined to be compassionate toward him. In so many battles I fought beside him, I've lost count long ago, I noticed so many times, how hesitant he always was to aim to soot fatal shots at Starscream. Bringing down the second in command could have given us a chance at wining the war ages ago. But he would always so obviously have preferred to just knock his jet mode out of the sky alive and barely damaged. He never said it to anyone, never spoke abut this out loud at all ever, but it was never any secret anyway that one of Prime's greatest dreams would always have been to see Starscream defect from the 'cons. Even now, with nothing left to really defect from, I tend to think that where ever he is, where ever it is his spark ended up, he might finally get a real smile on that ever serious face-plate of his, just to finally hear him say he wants to walk away from everything he was taught to believe, and help us rebuild Cybertron instead."
"I'll be honest Arcee. I'm not sure I'd want to see you get your hopes up too high..."
A couple of loud knocks on the outside of the door, made Arcee realize that she had forgotten all about the usual and to be expected morning visit from someone sent to get Knockout onto his cart. She looked from him to the door and back again, and when he laughed clearly realizing what she was thinking, she only gave a laugh too. Hurrying to grab the cart and pull it toward the recharge station after unplugging it, she yelled toward the door, at whoever was in the hall, to come in and help.
She was expecting to find Bulkhead waiting to come in and help with the job. Ratchet had been sending him a lot lately. He was efficient with it, considerably larger and heavier than Knockout and able to easily lift him. And he'd never had any problem with moving him, once he'd gotten over his initial quite unjustified worry that he could damage the dysfunctional bot simply by trying to move him. But instead, Ratchet stood in the hallway that morning, and from the look on his face-plate, the stress and defeat of te past days seemed to have lifted at least a little.
"Well would you look at that," he said, his optics right on Knockout at once. A slight grin formed on his face-plate then as he stepped into the room. "You're getting better and better with using those bars to sit yourself up."
"I'll admit I hated it at first," Knockout said in response. His optics dropped slightly to look toward the floor, but he finally moved to let go of his hold on the bar locked in place in front of him, and just continued to sit up well enough that way.
Arcee chuckled slightly under her intakes, nodding in agreement and conforming to the old medic, exactly what it was her mate had said. The set of bars over and next to the recharge station had had him quite visibly upset the first night after he'd seen that they had been installed for him to began to learn to use. He'd certainly spent some time grumbling about how it looked just plain terrible, and how he hardly wanted either himself or his mate living in a room that resembled a rehabilitation facility – that the parked cart, plugged in to charge in the far corner was bad enough. Then there had been frustrated head shaking, long moments of so obviously nearly crying in despair at the implications of permanence yet again, and then complete and utter refusal to even try using the new equipment. The despair had quickly disappeared though, and the well known stubbornness with it. And when he finally started to really try, he clearly liked the new level of freedom in being able to sit and move, and even learn to balance while reaching for nearby objects.
"Next step from there..." Ratchet mused, considering, "would be for you to get yourself on and off the cart." His slight smile grew in confidence. "Let's work on that one a while. No time like the present."
"You really think I…?" For all of his past annoyance and upset over the grab bars, Knockout grinned instead at this newly presented challenge.
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Arcee had been first concerned and a little panicked when she'd finally unpacked the little recharging basket, she'd purchased for her awaited youngling, and found several small pieces and a bag full of tiny nuts and bolts in the package. But Speedbreaker had built Knockout's mobility cart without even a blueprint and only a rough idea in her processor of how one was supposed to look. When Arcee had quickly remembered that and thought to ask for help, the little basket had been put together in moments. And now both bot femmes stood in Arcee and Knockout's room, looking over the simple metal basket on it's adjustable and detachable stand, both grinning about the cuteness of the thing.
"Thanks for the help with this, Speedy," Arcee said, meaning it sincerely. "I tell you, there is nothing a bot's ever learned on the front lines of battle, that would ever tell you how to possibly assemble a recharging basket..."
"No problem at all," Speedbreaker answered quickly. She looked the basket over and laughed a little with a smile on her face-plate and a slightly disbelieving shake of her head. "This is such a tiny thing to recharge in. It's hard to believe she'll fit in there."
"She'll fit," Arcee said, with her own little laugh. "Hard to believe, but yeah.. a first frame really is that small."
Her anxious and overwhelmed mood of the morning had been all but forgotten as the hours passed throughout the day. And by now, she was smiling brightly, thoroughly enjoying the sunshine that poured in through the little window at the far side of the living space, and just loving the feeling of anticipating the fast approaching arrival of a brand new youngling of her very own.
She hurried across the room then to grab a package containing tiny bedding that she had bought a good while before, and had stashed neatly on a shelf inside a storage cabinet. Grinning her excitement about it, she hurried back toward the little recharging basket, and proceeded decorate it nicely with the new bedding.
"That's so cute," Speedbreaker remarked, smiling with a strange look over her face-plate. Arcee may not have known Speedy all that well yet, but still it was obvious that even though she was still very young, she'd began to daydream about a youngling of her own. Arcee may not have known Speedbreaker all that well. But she did know Bumblebee. And remembering how he'd been on Earth with young humans, she could well image the young pair with a considerable handful of young ones tumbling around a crowded but happy apartment over the next century, all while he learned the medical field.
"You picked out such a pretty color," Speedy said after a moment. "Pink and white is a lovely combination."
"Its a bit of an Earth thing actually," Arcee chuckled. She was almost slightly embarrassed at her love for such a silly tradition, and one that had no real relevance at all on Cybertron. Little baby girls in pink, and little baby boys in blue… Maybe I just miss the human race, but pink and white were the only colors I even thought about when I went shopping." She shook her head slightly and chuckled out loud. "Knockout's memories of Earth were so different than mine. When I explained the pink and blue thing to him, he told me, if he had been the one to shop for bedding with Earth on the processor, the youngling would have black and white checkered bedding to resemble a car racing flag."
"A fair enough consideration for the next one," Speedbreaker grinned, laughing but a little too serious in her statement.
"No," Arcee said seriously, shaking her head a little. Her hand went, almost unconsciously to rest against her spark chamber and she smiled slightly. "We love this one already. There are no regrets about her creation. But still this was an accident, however happy that little accident might just make us. And with a mate as physically limited as Knockout is, just chasing after one will be hard on him, no matter how much he loves to do it. And helping him with anything he just can't do while juggling even one little one is enough. We decided together that she will be it for us. To have any more… well it just might not be fair to any of them."
"This little one of yours is important, even if there is ever only one of her," Speedbreaker observed smiling her understanding. "A child born to an Autobot and a former 'con… she'll represent something big... significant..."
"True," Arcee said, agreeing happily. She'd thought about that herself, more than once, and the idea made her smile every time.
"Have you ever wondered yet what color her optics will be. From what I've been reading about optic colors and the coding responsible, both red and blue might just be equally dominant codes, so in the case of one red and one blue optic'd bot, the optics of any offspring have about a fifty-fifty chance of either color..."
Arcee didn't answer. But she knew that Speedbreaker was very right in her information. Some research of her own, and a conversation with Ratchet at one point had confirmed that already. And silently she secretly hoped her youngling's optics, when they took on color along with her frame, would be blue like her own were. She looked to the future, however distant and imagined a time when just like in centuries long past and all but forgotton, the color of a bot's optics wouldn't matter anymore in the least. But that time was not now. And she feared to think of the discrimination a red optic'd youngling might just face on the newly restored Cybertron.
"The grab bars seem to be holding up just fine," Speedbreaker said after a moment, changing the topic away from the one that had clearly died uncomfortably in the air. She walked over toward the recharge station and tugged a little on first one and then the other, of the bars she had done most fo the work in installing, taking the perfectly opportunity to make sure they were indeed still safe and steady as she'd promised the set up would be.
"Not a single problem with them since you installed everything," Arcee nodded slightly. "And thank you for doing that job for us too by the way. Knockout is pulling himself up to sitting pretty well on his own now most days."
"Wow," Speedbreaker smiled.
"He's started learning to transfer to the cart by himself this morning. I've told him to be pateirnt with himself about it. Ratchet's said the same thing. But still he's utterly insistent he'll have the skill completely down by next week. I worry because he sets his goals so high and then gets so down when he fails to meet them on time, though he tried so hard..."
The door to her living space slid open before Arcee finish putting her thoughts into words. She turned around to watch Knockout roll his cart across the room at a speed slightly fast for an indoor space, and with a grin on his face-plate like she had never seen before. She shook her head in baffled disbelief when due likely only to his speed, he clipped a floor lamp with his front left wheel as he turned to get around the recharge station, and sent it crashing to the floor. Still he just went on grinning.
"What the frag has gotten into you?" Arcee asked him, laughing and shaking her head, while she picked up the knocked over lamp.
"Shockwave is in contact with this base," Knockout said, speaking fast and still grinning over something that seemed a strange thing to be happy about. "He contacted 'Bee during a comm shift not long ago."
"Well he's got some nerve," Arcee mumbled back, frowning to hide a snarl of anger, even as her mate went on strangely smiling over the situation. "What's that dirty 'con want?"
Arcee knew, the second the words had left her mouth, that they may have just been a little out of line. She was rushing to conclusions, fired up and looking for a fight before the risk of one even stood in front of her. She remembered, much to her regret, a day she had mumbled much the same about Knockout, some time after he joined the Autobots… before she called him a friend. But it was in her very nature she felt, to think first with her fists and battle changed spark, and only later with her processor, perhaps too late and after the fact. Suddenly disliking her own tendency toward quick tempered impulsiveness due to anger, she forced away the biting annoyance and assumed an air of professional maturity.
"He's prepared to give himself up, and bargain with us for his continued freedom," Knockout said. He still grinned, but at least now the reason was beginning to make some sense. "Ratchet's stepped in to negotiate. Maybe, just maybe, if we play this right, we get take out Starscream and end the war entirely."
"What?" Arcee's optics open wide in surprise, and at the edge of her vision, she saw Speedbreaker, looking at both of them with confusion on her face-plate and baffled by the whole situation. "Shockwave would never reach out to the Autobots, and he'd certainly never want to bargain for a thing."
"You're wrong Arcee," Knockout answered seriusly. The grin left his face-plate then, but he did continue to smile a little at her even through his sudden bluntness. Not a second later though the grin was back, and he reached out to grab his bondmate's hand with his stronger one. For a second he just sat still on the mobility cart swinging her hand playfully in front of his seated frame and grinning. "I know how much you clearly wanted to see Starscream defect from the 'cons. I know this isn't quite the same, but it's something big, and it's a start!"