Fire of Youth

Chapter 35


Thorny, dry shrubs and cacti projected out of the orange-gold sand far out to the horizon. The buttes reached high into the cloudless skies, the sun bright and hot. Fine dust kicked up along the road, while in the distance heat mirages shimmered. But, so familiar to her, she did not focus on the landscape. She knew it, and she knew the roads that ran through the area. It was comforting white noise against the growling engine of the red Dodge Challenger driving by her side and the lower pitched, amiable voice that came from it. She didn't really focus on what he was saying. She was just happy to hear his voice again. It had been so long.

"Gotta love the open road," he said cheerfully. "Maybe not the sand, but you gotta admit this planet's got some pretty cool –"

The sun, the desert, the open road, his idle chatter just behind her for once, everything felt right. Everything felt normal again.

"It's just not the same without you..." she murmured.

The sun went dark slowly. It didn't bother her. She assumed it was just a cloud blocking the light. That tended to happen. She looked up to confirm. Unease burrowed into her spark. But there was no cloud, she noticed. It was like the star had dimmed like an old, worn out incandescent bulb. The red Dodge suddenly cried out in pain and alarm. When she checked her rearviews, he was gone. Completely gone.

She screeched to a stop and transformed, "Cliff?!" she called. "Cliff, where are you?!"

The world got darker. Clouds obscured the skies, and thick fog rolled in. It was grey at first, but it darkened into a black deeper than a comet's body and colder than Airachnid's twisted mind, violet lightning crackling in its folds. She took four steps back, hyperventilating as her fear centers spiked hard. She knew this fog. Smokescreen had described it. It wasn't fog, it was

Coarse chuckling met her audials, the sound familiar in all the wrong ways. She spotted something deeper in the fog's embrace seconds later – a battered, hunched figure that lurched forward in an unsteady gait. But she couldn't get a good look at it. The fog was too thick, its weighty billowing keeping her from getting a lock on the thing for an analysis. And then it lurched out. A familiar red frame, beaten, battered, and broken, that bore two horns on the sides of the helm, and reeking violet invaded every plate seam and exposed anatomy. From its throat came a low, gurgling growl. There was a puncture wound in its chassis that oozed liquid violet. And its optics his optics were violet, but she saw baby blue speckled in them.

"Cliff..." she rasped.

Her hand reached out.

No, she told herself. No, it wasn't him. It was just a mindless husk now.

The husk kept lurching forward.

"Why did you leave...?" the husk wondered in a disturbingly normal voice. "Why did you leave...? I can't see you...Where are you...?"

It lurched forward again, trying to grab one of her arms. She deployed an arm blade and yanked free, but its hand snatched her other arm.

"No! Let go! Stop!"

She slashed at the thing's faceplates. It reeled back, giving a noise of pain, but then it lurched and grabbed her again.

"Arcee! Arcee!" cried the husk of her partner as it began to shake her.

Terrified, unable to use her arm blades, she kicked out as hard as she possibly could. The husk reeled back. She struck out again. Another kick, another punch, another swipe. She did no relent, even as the fog thinned and blue began to overtake the violet. Even when the attack felt...wrong for some reason.

"ARCEE!"

She kicked.


Her optics snapped open just as a leg connected to a metal target – metal, she knew, because of the clang. She was lying on the ground according to her sensors, and through her fritzing sight she saw a figure stagger back, grunting in pain. A white figure, with orange accents. She thought for a moment she'd accidentally hit Ratchet. That she was willing to let slide. When it cleared, horror pounded through her systems. Her hand went to her mouth as a gasp escaped. It wasn't Ratchet she'd kicked. She wished it were.

She gasped, "Smokescreen?!"

"Yeah," he confirmed in a squeaking rasp as he massaged his aching jaw. "Hey."

She rose quickly and staggered towards him, her motor systems still on-lining, "I am so sorry! I-I didn't mean –!"

"No, no, it's fine. Really, it's okay," he said in a pain-strained voice that still somehow retained a sense of humor, "I totally needed my jawline re-arranged anyway. But I guess I kinda deserved that."

She looked at him.

He shifted awkwardly, "I saw you squirming in power down, so I really shouldn't have grabbed you or shaken you. I just made it worse, didn't I?"

She let the tension in every circuit escape in a sigh. At least some of the nightmare made sense now. Smokescreen's efforts to wake her had translated poorly.

"...Are you okay?" he asked quietly. "That must've been one heck of a night-terror."

"You're not wrong," she agreed. "I'm glad you cut it short. But why did you come?"

"...I wanted to make sure you were alright," he admitted. "You've been hiding out in this hangar at night for the past few days. I would've come sooner but Ratchet told me not to..."

"So what made you come this time?"

"I dunno," he admitted. "I just...something felt wrong?"

She eyed him again. Optimus had always had an uncanny ability to know when something was troubling a 'bot, but this was uncannier still. Had he somehow sensed her distress from Hangar E? Was that even possible? Then why hadn't he come before? Or had he sensed it, but not known what to do about it until now?

"Arcee...how long have these night-terrors been going on?"

She couldn't lie to him, "Ever since –"

The sentence didn't need finishing. The look he gave her said he understood the timeline perfectly.

"Cliff's fine, Arcee," he told her softly. "The guides are finishing collection; Cliff wasn't one of them. He got picked up a long time ago."

"You're sure?" she demanded.

He nodded. He was sure. Onyx was sure. Optimus was sure. Freaking Primus himself was sure about this.

If he was trying to get her to smile or laugh a little, it didn't really work.

"Then why am I having nightmares...?"

"Because losing a partner, then having him re-animated through a sick experiment by the enemy, then being unable to save him a second time – that's traumatic. This 'issue' we discovered brought that trauma back, I guess, made you panic at the possibility he'd gotten trapped."

Something inside her bristled at the accuracy of his statement, "Since when were you an expert on my thought processes?"

He winced, backed off a little. He wasn't, he said, and he definitely wasn't claiming to be, but Optimus was a lot more aware of her past, and how her mind worked, than he was.

The bristling sense subsided.

Infernus stood there for a few moments, awkward and clearly unsure what else to do. One trod shifted back, like he was prepping to leave, then a spark went off in his field. She didn't need to see it; she felt it. He transformed and bounded out into the open air. He stood looking back at her for another moment and then quickly craned his neck towards his back before looking back at her with the most expectant look she'd seen on a dragon's face.

*Come on!*

"Come on...?"

*You and Jack always go on rides whenever one of you is upset. But since humans need sleep –*

It was embarrassing that it took almost thirty seconds to compute where that train of thought was going, "Are you suggesting you take me for a ride?"

His helm went to one side, *Why not? We already proved you can ride me. You did it in El Paso, didn't you?*

The short laugh that escaped was nervous, curious, and uncomfortable.

"No," she told him.

He bounced on his paws a little, reminding her of a particularly excited parakeet. Come on! he insisted. It wold be fun!

"No. It's dangerous. I'm sure you don't need to me to explain why."

The air of dejected disappointment that accompanied his hanging helm and drooping wings was, in a word, depressing. She felt like she'd slapped a child. He was just trying to be helpful, she reminded herself.

"I guess a once-around-the-block wouldn't hurt..." she said slowly.

He perked back up in an instant, tucking his wings against his side as she approached him. It was strange – finding the proper place to situate herself had been a lot easier in the middle of a free-fall, like the human concept of muscle memory in reverse. It took almost a full minute to seat herself on his back, but once situated it didn't feel as strange as she'd thought it would; a little odd but not so very uncomfortable. Was that how Jack felt rising in her saddle?

*Hold tight!*

She balked, "To what?!"

Laughing into the short-band channel, he burst into a run so quickly she yelped. Her hands grasped desperately for the seams in his plating. They found a good seam near the base of his neck just in time for his wings to pump down hard and launch him into the air. She clung tighter as he climbed up, higher and higher, the crisp night air suddenly chillier now that it rushed past. But even with her optics shuttered tight, her altimeter kept feeding her data. Twenty feet, forty, seventy, a hundred, two hundred. His climbing became less vertical as he kept going. She felt the world spin as he performed a steadier spiral ascent. He leveled out at just over a klick in the air. Her grip on the seams didn't loosen. She still refused to un-shutter her optics. One klick in the air on the Iron Will felt a lot safer than being at that height on the exposed back of a Draconian, friend or not. There was no shelter. They would be easily spotted.

Prowl would throw a fit once he found out about this – if he were emotionally capable of throwing a fit in the first place. He would probably place her on probation or something.

Infernus seemed to catch on to her reluctance after a few seconds. His field began to speak.

~Trust~ ~Safe~ ~Place~ ~Self~ ~Other~

It was okay. He wouldn't let her fall. She was safe. He was safe.

She dared to look around. She squirmed, her mind screaming at her to leave, only for sight to shift below and her mind realize how far below the ground was. Gasping, she leaned forward and clung tighter to his neck base seams, fighting the urge to shutter her optics once more. Eventually, she decided a narrow squint would suffice.

Her whole frame tensed, her legs tucking tight against his sides, "Put me down, put me down, put me down, put me down..." she repeated.

A low growling rumble came from him, like a bear trying to purr and actually managing to make it to the halfway point.

"It's not funny!" she protested. "Put me down!"

*Just relax, okay? Enjoy the fact you're in the air, not falling and not getting shot at. You're completely safe. I promise.*

She found it difficult to follow his advice on hearing it. Yet as the minutes passed, as he flew around the edges of the compound, her tense uncertainty began to ebb. She let her helm rise and her gaze began to wander, her mind admitting then that being up so high wasn't so terrible. She could see the slightest curve on the horizon now at such a height, and even the nearby peaks were less intimidating. Her sight roved to the south, behind her. Out in the distance Las Vegas pulsed and shone like a rave party against the blue-black of the desert sky. But it looked so...so small. Everything looked so small now. The mountains, the little blips out in the desert that were small settlements, Vegas, were all scaled down, and the once spacious hangars of the military compound were reduced to particularly large Lego bricks.

This was how the Decepticons saw this planet and everything on it from their flying fortress. Tiny. Insignificant.

Infernus, she noticed, was watching the ground, too. Not just watching, either, the way one would watch for potential dangers. There was a sadness in those optics, a longing every time he glanced down.

*I miss the road.*

It was such a simple statement she didn't quite understand it at first.

*I know I should be grateful for being on equal footing with the 'Cons, and I am, don't get me wrong. I just this is gonna sound pathetic, but I miss the feel of the roads.*

"You miss the roads when you have a view like this?" she wondered, spreading her arms out to try to encompass everything. "Really?"

*I miss the roads as much as I miss being able to drive on them into cities and prank Vince with Jack, or drag race with 'Bee on the streets and annoy the cops, then park someplace and leave them scratching their heads at the empty car they've been chasing. I miss the heat of the asphalt on my tires. Slag, I even miss the litter and the dust and the slick roads after a storm. Everything's so...distant up in the air. Far away. Cold.*

She leaned back. The roads weren't really what he missed, she realized. He missed being normal, being one of them.

He began to spiral back down once over Hangar B. His landing was a little rough. He let her off, then transformed.

"So?" he wondered. "Did that help?"

As cheerful as his smile was, it seemed forced. Like he wanted to pretend everything was alright. For her sake, she realized.

"Yeah," she told him, deciding to leave out the preliminary terror of it all.

Still smiling that oddly forced smile, he awkwardly backed up, turned around, and walked away. Not until his white form was far off in the distance did she take her sight off him. Only then did she retreat back inside the hangar. But she didn't power down again. She leaned against one of the walls and stared at the ceiling instead, feeling she understood him a little better now – as Smokescreen, not as Infernus. He wanted things back to normal like everyone else did, but was fully aware that wasn't going to happen. He missed the past. He was nostalgic. She'd thought he'd gotten accustomed to the new way. He had adjusted on the outside, she guessed. On the inside, the upset to the norm still lingered, even now, and he'd been open enough to share that with her.

Why?

Did it matter why?


Ratchet caught him right as he entered Hangar E, "Smokescreen, what happened to your jaw?"

He hemmed. He tried to skirt past him. Ratchet was having none of his scrap. The medic grabbed him and stared him down. He was forced to explain.

Any potential annoyance about the dent faded. His expression turned haggard. He guided him over to the slab and started to even out the dent. Prowl gave him a quick glance from where he stood, judged he wasn't needed, and resumed his contemplation. He was secretly glad.

"Piece of advice, Smokescreen: never shake her awake if she's having a night-terror. Cliifjumper learned that the hard way."

He stared, "She's had night-terrors before?"

Ratchet traded out one tool for another, "Too many. That's what trauma does to the psyche. Trauma isn't a mesh wound you can patch up, watch mend, and be done with. It's like cancer. Even if you think you've been cured of it, it can come still back."

"I started to think she was getting better, too," he admitted. "Shows what I know, I guess."

"No, no. I believed she was improving as well," Ratchet argued, "but though I suspected the discovery would cause her discomfort, I did not believe it would trigger her trauma again. Did you –?"

"I told her," he said. "I don't know if it helped really, that or the ride."

Ratchet eyed him, arcing one brow ridge, "...the what?"

He found himself unable to look at the older mech, suddenly feeling shy and awkward, "I thought that since she and Jack rode together when one of them was upset that –"

The medic chortled softly as he spoke, "Smokescreen, I'm not condemning the act. An unorthodox solution doesn't make it a bad one. I'm sure Jack appreciates not being woken up at three in the morning. No matter how much he would've wanted to help her, you did the right thing by leaving him undisturbed."

They both lapsed into silence. The medic continued to work. He winced and grunted when the dent was finally flattened out.

"You were lucky, you know," Ratchet told him, putting away his tools. "Cliffjumper ended up with slash wounds on his arms and chassis when he tried to wake her from a night-terror and then ended up held in a ground choke hold until she came out of it, not a banged up jaw."

He winced again, though a grimace soon joined it, "I-I salute him," he said through a dry chuckle, matching act to word.

Again there was a tenuous silence. He let his gaze wander back out to the moon-washed tarmac. He wondered if she'd resumed her power down, or if the lingering fear of her night-terror was keeping her online. He wished he could do more to help but it still felt like she was keeping him at arm's length. Having her on his back had been the closest she'd let him come. He suspected that might be the closest she'd ever let him.

'Meaning you wish to get closer to her?' Optimus rumbled in what sounded like an eerily humorous tone.

He jolted, 'What? No!'

'That came a liiittle too quick...' snickered Maximo.

'Shut it.'

'Oooh. So touchy.'

'Stop pestering him, jackass,' Solus snapped.

'Lang–'

Solus growled. Alpha Trion didn't continue the scold, he noticed.

"Hey, doc?"

Ratchet turned.

"What's the progress on the tracking chip?"

"At a rough estimate?"

"Sure."

"Nearly done. Forty-eight hours at the most. I'll have the base signal mimicked and ready for use then."

He nodded.

"Any 'Con activity?"

"None so far."

"Keep me posted?"

"Of course. I'll ask you keep me posted on Arcee over the next forty-eight hours in return. Alert me if another night-terror comes."

He squirmed uncomfortably. He wasn't looking forward to another socked jaw, and Arcee wasn't a fan of being monitored.


Author's Note: I know it's another shortie, but the workload is picking up. Plus, this is an intermission chapter.