Chapter 25

There are very few chores to do, so after that I pull out all the towels and blankets in the storage closet and refold them. They were a little untidy to begin with. That always happens with towels. They go in neat, and then they get a little untidy as the other towels get moved in and- Anyway. I just took care it. And the blankets. And… other stuff.

I get hungry after a while, so I go to the lounge and get a plain cube of energon. Maybe Ratchet will find some other chores for me when he wakes up. Maybe.

I look around slowly and closely. There is dust on the baseboards. Little cleaner drones usually clean the floor, but they don't reach up to the baseboards. I clean all the dust up after I finish my energon, and then Ratchet comes in and sniffs. He looks around and finds me under a table with a cloth and a spray bottle of cleaner.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"Cleaning," I say. "Baseboard dust."

He nods.

Then he sighs.

"Soundwave sent another picture," he says, so I crawl out from under the table to see. He holds a data-pad for me. Elita had sent him the picture.

Auri is sitting on her pillow on the floor, and she has a polishing kit sitting on an empty energon cube in front of her. She laughing because she has a restraining arm around one of the cassette warriors, the little purple-blue one, and he's pretending to grimace because she's pretending to polish his helm. The little red cassette warrior is sitting beside her, and he's laughing, too.

I see this picture later. After I give Starlight her breakfast and play with her for a while, and after I clean some other things, I go to Sunstreaker's studio, and that's where I see the picture again.

Sunstreaker is painting a copy of it in larger strokes than he usually uses. It doesn't look right.

"Hi," I say. Maybe I'm a little cautious. I shut the door quietly.

"Hi, Prax," Sides says from the couch. He's all sprawled and slouched down and playing some game on his data-pad, but he pauses it to make optic contact with me and halfway smile with just one side of his mouth. I guess he thinks Auri isn't coming back either. I rub at the ache of my chest, and then shift my attention to Sunstreaker.

Sunstreaker keeps painting. I go over closer.

"Hey," he says quietly, glancing my direction and then back at his work. The armor on his hands scuffed and dinged, polish and paint chipped off. It's not right. Sunstreaker always takes care of his armor. Immediately. This is all wrong. And the painting doesn't seem right either.

"Why are you painting that?" I ask. Sometimes he paints things that confuse me, but then they make sense when he explains them. I don't know how this one will make sense.

"So I can rip it up," Sunstreaker says, quiet, calm.

That doesn't make sense, but I don't think I should say that.

"Okay," I say.

He glances at me. I think he knows what I didn't say. "You'll see," he says and then goes back to painting.

I watch for a little while, but I don't like it, so I look around. I have some in progress artworks myself, but none of them want me to work on them right now. There is a lot in here that could use a good cleaning, though, so I start cleaning. I begin by gathering every empty food container, every empty energon cube, every used cloth, towel, and napkin.

Sides is playing his game and ignores me, but Sunstreaker pauses his painting to watch me for just a little while. I don't know if I should say something. I don't know what I would say. I shift my wings uncertainly.

Sunstreaker halfway shrugs. "Thanks," he says after a pause, and then he goes back to painting. I don't think he means it to express gratitude, but it is a word to let me know that it is okay for me to do this. Maybe, I guess.

By lunchtime, I have every stray recyclable in the recycling bin and every trash item in the trash bin and every cloth in the wash hamper, and I have gotten every dust off every windowsill and baseboard and window frame. I had to use the ladder to reach some places, but I didn't mind that.

I go to med-bay for lunch and to see if Prowl is doing anything yet, but he's not. Starlight is cranky, and Uplink keeps her in for a nap.

After lunch, I go back to the studio, and Sunstreaker has finished the painting and his lunch. He's washing his brushes meticulously as he always does.

"So… you're going to rip it up?" I ask, looking at the painting.

"Does that bother you?" he asks.

I look at the painting some more. "I don't know." I still don't like the painting.

"It'll be better ripped up," Sunstreaker states. "It's part of a larger piece. It's not supposed to be the final product."

I look around at other artworks. "Okay," I say. I trust him.

He finishes cleaning the brushes and sets them out to dry. Then we both look at the painting. I look away because I don't like it. It's not in his usual style with every stroke clean and perfect. It's rough, choppy.

"Your hand armor is a mess," I say.

He looks at his hands. After a long pauses, he shifts. Then we sit, and I watch him fix his hand armor. It takes about an hour, and the end result is good. Hand armor all properly painted, polished, and buffed.

"Okay?" Sunstreaker says, and I nod. Then he goes and starts methodically and slowly ripping the painting, tearing it into pieces and putting the pieces down neatly so they aren't jumbled up. I could slide them closer, and it wouldn't look torn up, but I don't want to go near that painting.

After the painting is all torn up, Sunstreaker get another canvas and throws, literally throws, paint on it. That paint splatters and runs, spotting, dripping. Sunstreaker lets it all settle and start to dry, and then he takes his finger and smears the glyph "NO" in Cy-Stan into the paint very clearly, very large so it goes from edge to edge of the canvas. Then he pours glue into a dish and takes the first torn piece, a corner piece, dabs it in the glue, and sticks it in the corner of the "NO" canvas. He does this with the next piece and the next piece, all of the pieces, sticking them all on the "NO" canvas. There is enough space between the torn pieces that you can see the "NO" and its colors very clearly, but the torn pieces are also close enough that you can tell what the picture is. It's like two paintings in one. I don't like it.

Sunstreaker looks at me when he's done, and I look away.

I try to figure out what to say.

"It's not a style you're used to," Sunstreaker says while I'm still trying to figure out.

That's true, so I move my helm in agreement.

"It's okay," Sunstreaker says. Then he takes it and sticks it on the wall where everybody will see it. I don't like it there, but it's his studio, so he gets to decide where things go.

I stand still. He walks past me and goes over to the sink to clean his hands. He comes back and stands in front of me, offering up his hands for inspection, teasing me, I think. Maybe.

"All clean," he says. "You wanna hit the racetrack?"

I glance toward the painting that I don't like. Going to the racetrack would be better than staying here with that painting, so I nod.

Sunstreaker grabs the nearest plastic tube of paint and throws it so it hits Sides's pede.

"Whaaat," Sides says, not looking up from his game.

"We're going to the racetrack," Sunstreaker says.

Sides stops his game and puts it in subspace as he gets to his pedes. "Kay," he says. I guess he's coming with us.

After the racetrack, which wasn't very fun, I drive slowly back to med-bay for dinnertime.

Starlight is in a better mood. Prowl is the same. All the adults are the same, too, I guess.

Mirage comes in with a bag, and I can smell fresh oilcake.

"Special delivery," he says gently. So he also thinks Auri isn't coming back.

"Why?" I say, looking at him.

"Because Ratchet ordered it, and I delivered it," he says. "Usually Uplink orders and you deliver," he explains when I don't get it.

"I was racing with the twins," I say. That's sort of inaccurate. The three of us were on the track, but Sunstreaker just tore off and didn't pretend to race with me. He was trying to beat a personal record or something. Sides wasn't trying anything at all.

"Sounds fun," Mirage says. He moves his weight on his pedes a little. "Hey, about tomorrow, we have your shift covered so you don't need to come in."

I look at him. I want to shove him and make him believe that Auri isn't gone forever. I just say, "Why?"

He wasn't expecting this, but he doesn't look flustered. He shrugs. "In case you want to stay with Prowl or have some time away from other bots. I know it's hard adjusting to absences-"

I shove him. "SHE IS COMING BACK!" I yell as he stumbles backward. He takes the motion and moves it into a transformation and scoots away from me in car mode.

"Well, of course," he says, sounding like he's being truthful. I can't read his face with him in car mode. "But she's not back yet, and everyone is handling differently. Since you just pushed me, I'm guessing you'd rather not be subjected to everyone's opinions on the matter, but you are probably going to get them if you come in tomorrow."

I think about this.

"They're at least going to be sympathetic," Mirage adds.

I look over at Jolt, who'd come in. He probably wanted to make sure I wasn't going to bite Mirage or something.

I look back at car-mode Mirage. I don't want to be around bots expressing sympathy all over me about Auri never coming back. He's right.

"Okay," I say. "I won't come in tomorrow."

"Alright," Mirage says. He rolls on his tires a little, back then forward then back. "How about we just take you off the schedule until you feel like coming back. Then you won't feel any pressure or stress about it. And when you feel ready, just let me know, and I'll put you back on the schedule."

I don't know how I feel about this, but Jolt nods when I look at him, so I nod, and Mirage acts like it's settled and drives away with an "Okay. See you later" before anyone can say anything else.

I pick up the bag that Mirage left and peek in at the mixed energon and the small boxes that definitely hold fresh oilcakes.

Ratchet and Uplink and Jolt have dinner with Starlight and me. The whole focus during dinner for those three bots is pretending that everything is fine and chatting with Starlight and me. Nobody talks about the new picture of Auri that Soundwave sent shortly before dinner. The one where she's playing a board game with the little red cassette warrior and the little purple-blue cassette warrior. Nobody talks about it. I wonder if Sunstreaker is going to make a painting of that one, too, and tear it up into pieces and glue it to another painting of "NO."

After dinner, I go visit sleeping Jazz and tell him a lot of fun stories. I don't tell him about how all the bots are acting like Auri is never coming back. Or about Mirage giving me time off work. I just tell him fictional and stories about what the future will be like when he wakes up. Auri is back in that future, and Prowl is himself again.

There's not much to tell about the next few days. They are lost days where Prowl does nothing and Ironhide sits with Prowl. Starlight takes extra naps because she gets a little cranky sometimes, like the adults, but the adults don't take extra naps. Nobody takes down the slumber party tent we made for Starlight, and Ironhide brings Prowl inside it every night to sleep in a cuddle puddle with me and Starlight and Ratchet and Uplink. Chromia comes in later. Her system makes soft snore sounds because the high-grade is gunking it up. Soundwave sends two pictures a day of Auri. I do not scream about anyone or anything. I do chores and hang out with the twins, who aren't much fun. Sides plays a lot of extra video games, and Sunstreaker doesn't paint anything that I like.

Three or four days go by like that. Maybe five days or six days. I don't really know. The thing that matters is that after those days, I wake up one morning, and Prowl has moved himself out of the cuddle puddle and is sitting on the edge of a mattress and polishing some of his armor, vigorously buffing a shin-plate.

Some code in my processor tells me to be careful, but I don't know why. This is Prowl. I know Prowl.

I wriggle away from Chromia and crawl over to sit beside Prowl. Still polishing his shin-plate, he glances slightly my way, just enough to see that it's me without quite looking at me. Then his optics are back on his work.

I shift my wings, not sure what to say. I just watch.

"Your armor looks good," I say after a little while. It's true.

He doesn't say anything. He finishes the shin-plate and moves on to a pede.

"I keep having to tell Sunstreaker to take care of his," I say. This is also true. He keeps getting scuffs and dings and not doing anything about it. Plus he punches stuff every single day, too. But anyway, Prowl doesn't respond to this either.

His pedes were already in good shape, so they don't take long to polish, and then he ducks out of the tent and stands up. I scramble to follow after him.

"Where are you going?" I ask him. I'll be going with him, of course.

"Showers. Then the office," Prowl says. His vocs is rough, sounding a bit cold from not being used for so many days. He sounds like a stranger. And his tone is distant. Like I'm a stranger.

"Okay," I say. Then, "I'm coming with you."

He keeps stalking down the hallway, but he glances at me. Not meeting my optics, but just glancing at my frame for a second. Assessing.

"Fine. You will answer the phone." With his rough, cold vocs and no smile, he makes it sound like it's a threat, or like I'm being punished for something. I hate being punished, especially when I haven't done anything bad.

But I'm good at answering the phone, and I like answering the phone, so I'm not worried.

"Okay," I say. I try to not be worried. But I think maybe I don't know this Prowl.