Chapter 26
Auri, Routine

She wakes up and stretches a little as her system cycles up, cooling fans giving a little gust as she does so. She peeks at the faint light that shows in the crack of the closet door. A faint light means Papa is awake but not up, just lounging in his bed and reading something.

Smiling, she scoots until she can put her pedes on the closet wall, and then she patters her heels against the wall, tapping quickly, left-right-left-right-left-right. Papa answers back by giving the wall a light thump with the side of his fist, and she grins.

She wriggles out from under her blankets and nudges the closet door open and crawls out. Getting to her pedes, she stands as tall as she can and reaches her hands up for a long satisfying stretch. Her systems gives a soft hiss as she lowers her hands, and then she twists a little before heading over to Papa's bed.

"Good morning, sweet spark," he says, tilting his data-pad as she climbs onto the big bed. It takes some effort with her leg feeling so stiff, but the snuggling is always worth it.

"Good morning," she purrs, crawling over to nestle beside him and enjoy the warmth that radiates off his big frame. He's so good and cozy.

He rubs her helm softly and then adjusts the blanket so it covers her legs. She tugs it up a little more and then snuggles against his side. He tucks his arm around her, making her feel safe and snug.

"Did you sleep well?" he asks this. He always asks this.

"I did," she answers contentedly. She hadn't always answered that. She'd not slept very well the first several nights, but now every night is fairly restful and most of her sleep is good. Last night, she'd had an odd dream where she was stuck in the sand by an ocean, partially buried in the sand, the weight of it trapping her as the waves crashed closer and closer. Then another Praxian, a mech with very intense optics and very still wings, had come and pulled her out. The sky had been blue, and the sea had been very blue-green, but she couldn't remember any other colors. The vividness of it had made her remember it after waking, but it hadn't disturbed her sleep. It did make her wonder, though. Had that mech been someone she knew? Someone she had known? She'd felt a very strong pull from him in the dream. It had been more vivid than the colors of the sea and the sky.

She closes her optics, trying to see if she can call back the image of his face, but it doesn't appear.

"Still a little sleepy?" Papa asks.

She nods. It's usually this way, her sleepy in the morning. "I might take a mini nap here," she says. Maybe she'll continue that dream. She'd like know where it had been going and who that mech had been.

"Okay," Papa says. "I'll be here."

She closes her optics softly. She hears him shift his data-pad so he can go back to reading, and then she lets herself drift off to sleep. For a little while, she dozes, and then she wakes when Papa taps his stylus on his data-pad. It's only a tiny noise, but she was ready to wake. The dream hadn't come back. No Praxian with intense optics. No answered mysteries.

When she opens her own optics, there is Papa, and she smiles up at him.

"Good nap?" Papa asks, though he seems a little preoccupied, and he fiddles his stylus the way he does when work doesn't seem to be going well.

She nods. "All good." She points at the data-pad of Kaonic text. "Is that bothering you?" she asks, curious.

"Slightly," he says. She hears a hint of a frown in his tone, even if she can't see the frown behind his visor and mask.

She studies the meaningless characters until one catches her optics. "Is that one 'energon'?" she asks, the eagerness of recognition in her tone.

"Good student," Papa purrs. "It is."

She grins, pleased with herself, delighted with praise.

"There is another one you might know ," Papa adds.

She snuggles closer and inspects the screen more intently. "Mmm… moon?"

"Correct," Papa says.

Smiling, she sighs with contentment. One day, she'll know all the words. Or at least all the commonly used words. Even though she was fluent in Cy-Stan and it was her primary language, there were still some words she didn't know, as would be the case with any language. Some much knowledge still to be accumulated…

"Papa?"

"Mm?"

"Is there energon on earth's moon?" Maybe it is a silly question, but Papa doesn't laugh or chuckle.

"No," Papa says. "Inconveniently."

She frowns. She'd thought there was some… somewhere near earth. She puzzles over it for a few moments while Papa continues to study the screen. She can't remember a lot of things. But she knows she knew some things about earth and its neighboring celestial bodies. Maybe. Maybe she'd researched them before travelling to this solar system.

"Is… is there energon on the… asteroids?" she asks after another couple moments.

"Some," Papa says. "You do not need to worry about it."

She picks up a note of disapproval in his tone, but she's not sure why it's there. Certainly there isn't anything wrong with wondering about energon sources, was there? Still, she shifts her wings apologetically, not wanting disapproval from her Papa. "I was just curious," she says. "There are a lot of resources in this solar system, but I don't know what they are, and I like knowing things."

Papa tilts his helm. "I did not mean to scold," he says. "I have many worries."

"Including energon?" she can't help but wonder.

Papa sighs shortly. "Yes."

She wants to ask about that, but after a second, she decides that she'd better not. Maybe she could help with coming up with ideas, but Papa doesn't seem to be in the best of moods this morning. Later, when he's in a better mood, maybe she'll bring it up. She's good at researching and clever about coming up with ideas after all. At least, she's pretty sure she was. Is?

With a sigh, she decides to move on from the subject, and she gets her data-pad from the little sub-space pocket Papa had given her. The Autobots had locked her out of her personal subspace storage access, and Papa hasn't been able to hack through the lock yet, so she is using a little external device that clips to her wrist and offers a small amount of subspace.

She examines her data-pad again. She keeps feeling like something is missing about it. It's a new data-pad Papa gave her, so… it should seem right, but somehow, it doesn't. She can't figure out what seems to be missing. It's perfectly standard, has all the buttons, all the features. She checks it every time she takes it out, hoping something will click in her processor at some point, but it doesn't this time.

"Hmm," she says to herself, moving on to power up the data-pad. She pulls out the stylus that came with the data-pad and twiddles it between her fingers for a couple seconds before pulling up her Kaonic study module. She's studying a few other things at present, trying to fill in the large gaps in her education, but Kaonic is her favorite subject. It feels right learning a new language; it feels good and satisfying, and something about it feels familiar and homelike, too. She feels less lost when she's practicing new words and running her vocs over new sounds, and she likes that. Anything that makes her feel less lost is good.

Having a routine is good, too. It's another thing that feels stable and familiar. After some quiet reading time, there's breakfast. She's starting to get used to the particular flavor of the energon. It still doesn't quite taste precisely right, but that's becoming normal. Papa always measures it carefully, and sometimes he adds her favorite spices. The spices make it almost right. And Papa sharing breakfast time with her makes it feel almost right as well.

After breakfast, she does her stretches, working out the stiffness and aches in her frame. This is another thing that feels familiar. She plays around with the motions, exploring different movements, different forms, and sometimes she finds one that feels like she's done it many times before. When she finds those ones, she makes a note of them so she can do them again. If she did them frequently in the past, they must have been good. And Papa has his own stretches that he does while she does hers, and it's nice to have the company.

After the stretches, there is more studying. She sprawls on Papa's bed by herself and studies whatever subjects she's assigned herself for the day. Papa sits at his desk and studies maps and charts and graphs and doesn't really want to be interrupted while he does it. Sometimes she peeks over from her studies and wonders about it, but, like the energon, it's not really her business, and he probably doesn't want her asking questions about it. Which is sort of a shame, she thinks. New questions could give him some new ideas. "Curiosity sparks innovation" had said … somebody one time. She can't remember who, though.

After a few hours of study and review, it's lunchtime, and she puts away her work while Papa puts his work away as well. Lunch is always fun. Papa mixes up some tasty energon and asks about the things she's learned. It's fun telling him about her new discoveries and latest achievements. And he's always proud of her and pleased with her, which makes her happy. His praise makes her so happy.

Can someone like praise too much? She ponders over it one afternoon after lunch when Papa has gone out and left her by herself. She decides that the answer is "yes." Someone could like praise too much if they let their desire for it lead them to do bad things or things that compromised their beliefs. Carefully, she considers herself and her Papa. Would she do something she thought was bad if it would earn his praise? She wants to say "no," that she wouldn't do that. She's fairly certain she wouldn't. She starts to frown, and then she laughs at herself. Her Papa would never ask or want her to do something bad, anyway, so this is a silly line of thought. She finds something else to do.

Papa always goes out after lunch. And he always says the same thing before he goes.

"Do not, under any circumstance, open the door for any one or any reason," he says firmly. "And do not answer any door comm., either. Understood?"

"Understood, Papa," she always says.

She knows she's supposed to be a complete secret and it's for her safety. She's a Praxian and most of the Praxians went against the Decepticons, so any Con who saw her would think she was an Autobot infiltrator, and things would go very badly. Also, Papa has enemies on the ship, and they wouldn't mind harming her to spite him.

This is another thing that she thinks about in his absence that makes her frown. Shouldn't the Decepticons be united enough in their fight against the Autobots that they wouldn't do such things to each other? Sure, she can understand disliking a team-member. She's had allies that she didn't particularly like before. She's pretty sure she has. But she can't imagine doing something harmful to them or someone they cared about. "Infighting is not productive," someone had said one time. Or maybe she'd read it somewhere. She's been reading The Gladiator's Burden, and it has a lot about uniting and rising up in it, fighting the Autobot oppressors in the streets instead of entertaining them by fighting each other in the pits, and that sort of thing.

Papa is usually gone most of the afternoon, but she's not usually lonely. She enjoys having quiet time to herself sometimes, but not often, and Papa always asks if she would like a cassette or two for company. Most days, she says yes. Sometimes she wants Ravage, and she curls up with the feline and reads a fictional story. Other days, she wants Rumble or Frenzy, or both, and they play board games and card games. Other days, she picks Lazerbeak so he won't feel left out. He's not a good shape for snuggling with, and his bird build makes most games impossible for him to play, but he's very good at perching on Soundwave's chair's armrest and letting her polish his armor. And she's pretty sure he likes it, too.

Later, when Papa comes back from… whatever it is he does outside of their quarters, he wipes down his armor and sometimes takes a shower in the tiny shower facility connected to the quarters.

"What do you do out there?" she asked one time.

"Nothing you need to worry about, sweet spark," he answered, sitting down on his berth. She was sprawled on the middle with her data-pad, but she got up.

"I'm not worried," she said, walking over closer to him on her knees. "Just curious." She pounded her hands lightly and playfully on his shoulder. "What does my papa do out there all afternoon?"

He chuckled softly and tickled her in return. "Nothing as agreeable as spending time with you."

The tickling had distracted her, and she'd forgotten to press the subject any further that evening. But she still wonders, and she intends to ask again sometime. Sometime soon-ish.

One of these days, she's going to take a shower. It seems like a normal thing that she's done often, but she hasn't needed to wash here so far. Papa only needs to wash after he's been outside of the ship. It's naturally grimy out there, so just being out there makes a bot need to wash. As long as she stays inside the ship with its exceptional air filtration system, she won't need to wash very often. Maybe every other week if she really wants to. She might to do it just for a change in routine. She likes having a routine, but… this one doesn't feel quite varied enough. She's happy enough with it for now, but she suspects she'll get bored with it after another few weeks. Well, when she gets bored, she'll just see what she can do to rearrange her routine. Or something. Maybe Papa will sneak her out for a change in scenery. She wants to see the ocean.