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Elita had already been given an excess of time to regret her decision. They were twenty or so cycles out from Witwicky, and there was absolutely nothing to occupy Elita’s processor save for ‘pretending to be dead.’ (Which, unsurprisingly , was less intellectually taxing than her usual duties.)
Her optics were offlined and Skywarp was silent save for the occasional soft hitching ventilation, which left little room for inflow of information in either direction. Elita-One could request a comm-link, but she isn’t certain what she’d say even if Skywarp approved it.
‘I’m sorry that he didn’t tell you , first?’ That was… beyond lame. ‘I don’t think you’re stupid?’ Possibly deeply patronizing and lame.
Elita-One knew that she wasn’t the spokesperson of her team for… fairly good reason, and feared that she simply did not have the right words for their current situation.
(So it went, perpetually.) Elita remains silent, and tries not to look visibly uncomfortable— her mesh was genuinely crawling at the thought of being so dependent on another person. What would she even do at this point, if Skywarp dropped her— no matter how unlikely it seemed?
Elita-One reminds herself that despite Skywarp’s usually erratic behavior and the completely unnecessary height they’d climbed up to, the other mech was being careful: keeping one servo tucked securely under the bend of Elita’s knee-joints, the other flat against her back. I t was probably the most dignified way someone could haul around a corpse… so things could almost certainly be worse.
Though, she could do without the whiplash and motion sickness from the near-constant teleportations that the Seeker was performing just to try and get ahead a tiny bit faster. The steady flow of energon trickling down Elita’s frame prompted no small measure of concern, as well.
“We’re out of its range… as far as I know.” Skywarp breaks the silence, abruptly, demeanor seeming to switch on a dime. “I hope that you’re happy— I sincerely pray that being humanity's lapdog for a few measly stellar cycles was ‘worth’ it to you— considering that V.A.L wouldn’t even EXIST if not for YOUR betrayal! You went and handed them the test subjects they needed, the funding and notoriety and pretext… without question. Of course— since we’re the ones paying the price for Optimus Prime’s screw-up, it doesn’t matter. Who cares? You Autobots can’t even comprehend the meaning of the word ‘consequence’ — you can be as cowardly and incompetent as you like, and continue right on LIVING anyways! Starscream can take the fall, for the thousandth time, and the rest of us can be your nameless, faceless collateral!”
Elita-One silently thanks Primus that she had enough foresight to shut up about the Elite trine’s family melodrama… because asking about the problem undoubtedly would have angered Skywarp even further than she already had.
“I don’t — listen, Skywarp, that’s not fair!” Elita catches herself raising her voice, and swiftly forces herself to calm down. Yelling at grieving mechs rarely made them any less volatile. “I didn’t ask Starscream to do whatever it is that he’s done. I don’t even know what’s going on! I can assume that he’s hurt based on your vitriol and broad-sweeping accusations… but that’s not something I could have controlled at this point! Starscream told me he had a plan, and I assumed it was a GOOD one. Can you blame me?”
“Oh, no ! I can’t! ” Skywarp begins to laugh, the sound abrasive and cruel. Elita tenses, currently very aware that she’s stranded out several thousand feet in the air. “After all, it’s Starscream who wants to be the hero, regardless of all the fake scrap he does to convince people otherwise. He’s been looking for a reason to die, to leave us all over again… and now, he’s trying to persuade the virus to consume his mind. Of all the STUPID plans in the world! What’s the point in being a genius programmer, if in the end all you can come up with is— a cheap, cowardly trick, that— that doesn't even actually FIX things!”
Elita-One reaches out, slowly, to rest a servo on Skywarp’s pauldron.
“I’m truly sorry to hear that. I’m sorry that you believe my actions contributed to your suffering… and that you are not entirely wrong to say it. Self-sacrifice is an unfortunately common pastime among Autobots, and rarely helpful to anyone.” Elita attempts to express her earnest sympathy despite her frustration, hoping to nudge Skywarp out of the dark mood she’d fallen into.
“Starscream is helpful!” Skywarp blurts out, suddenly on the defensive moments after denouncing just about everything that Starscream was attempting.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Starscream doesn’t take risks that aren’t productive! He drags our sorry afts out of trouble no less than five or six times a decacycle! Every time, without fail, he’s there! It’s so frustrating, but… Primus, it gets to the point that I can’t help but be jealous of him. Of the kind of person he can be, without even trying, without even thinking! Don’t you DARE imply that I’m not proud of him, that I shouldn’t be proud, ever again!” Skywarp freezes up, as if startled by her own words, before continuing. “I mean— no, what I wanted to say was… that I sometimes wish that I could be someone else, instead. My trine has more to offer me than I have to offer them, and it bothers me. ’Jealous’ is an imprecise descriptor.”
Elita-One finds that the sentiment resonates somewhere deep, for her. It was familiar enough— wanting to give more than she had , and running herself down in the process.
Elita wanted nothing more than to be the best: to be the kind of mech that others could rely on to excel at something (anything) in a manner that was irreplaceable— and yet she always seemed to fall just a few millimeters short of her goal. She lost , again, and again, and again. It was maddening.
She couldn’t be the strongest fighter on her team, she couldn’t be the one who effortlessly connected with the others when it came time to give an inspirational speech, she couldn’t be the most exceptionally brilliant— and lately, she had found that she wasn’t even the most adept at doing her job the ‘ right’ way. Elita had been slipping, not following her own spark or instinct, getting desperate and exhausted to the point of making stupid (cruel, neglectful, lazy) mistakes and embarrassing herself.
She compensated for these losses in her own way, handling the issue of ‘contribution’ as a matter of brute force; after all, there was always something to improve, something to do ‘for the team.’ It meant taking on more than her fair share of the menial work, throwing herself into training, making herself someone who couldn’t be replaced… even if she suspected that some of her peers might wish that they could.
“I think Starscream must trust you an awful lot, to keep putting you in charge of the very few things that he cannot handle himself. That means something— you watch your team’s back, and they appreciate it. They care about you, Skywarp. He always will. I’m not exactly the most… colorful character within my own team, but putting in the work is enough.” Elita-One’s vocalizer spits static. “It has to be.”
Skywarp’s frame trembles, and Elita begins to worry that she’s really fragged up this conversation. She considers briefly blaming it all on the energon loss, pride be scrapped.
“I don’t deserve to be forgiven— and I’m nothing like you, Elita-One.” Skywarp grits out, eventually. “I watched him get torn apart, again and again, and I didn’t so much as put up a fight. He’d have died to protect me a thousand times over, if our roles were reversed. I keep telling myself I won’t screw up and abandon my brother, that I’ll make it up to him for once in my Pits-forsaken life, and then I catch myself abandoning him again. I’m doing it, even now.”
Skywarp has to reset her vocalizer, repeatedly, and the air crackles with electrical charge.
“All of us have lived long enough to fail ourselves, and each other, thousands of times. To see our intentions warped and twisted, to watch better mechs suffer and die… to marvel at the cruelty of chance. If you’re worried because you think Starscream’s going to go to his grave blaming you— you’re wrong. I can tell, just by the way he looks at the two of you, that he adores you both. You’re family. He doesn’t hold the past against you because he knows your spark better than anyone else. ” Elita-One attempts to smile, because she knows Skywarp needs to see it. “I’ve also had to calculate Starscream’s odds in countless battles, by now— which means that I know all too well that he’s borderline unkillable. That walking nightmare of a soldier is going to scrape his way out of this, and he’ll be laughing his aft off and making tacky jokes about it, by tomorrow.”
Skywarp attempts to reign herself in by drawing her silent, shuddering frame into some sort of stiff facsimile of normalcy. She’d been holding back her loss this entire time— but even now, she didn’t allow herself to cry openly. Her tears go unshed.
“Thank you.” Skywarp manages, after a long moment, coolant still pooling in her optics. “You know, for a mech that prides herself on her hardened demeanor — you’re all soft and fluffy, on the inside. You didn’t have to be so sweet, to me. I shouldn’t have gotten so angry, to begin with— that’s Nova Storm’s thing.”
“... maybe I just didn’t want you to drop me.” Elita-One quips, and it feels just as cheap and fake as she had expected, as she draws her walls up once again.
******
Skywarp robs an auto-repair shop and Elita-One pretends not to notice this fact at all. It’s not like there was a more honorable course of action available for the two of them— and they were handling a world-ending threat.
“... I’m not going to be very good at this, I’m afraid.” Skywarp hedges, awkwardly, wings pinned flat to her back.
“It’s a scrape.” Elita-One deadpans. “You cannot possibly frag this up. If you frag this up, I will personally ask the President of the United States to award you a medal honoring your advancements in the field of stupidity.”
Skywarp kneels by the medical kit, servos trembling as she picks up the welding kit.
“Does it hurt?” Skywarp winces, at the look Elita gives her for that. “I know I can’t… well, kill you , or anything… but I still don’t want to leave a weird scuff, or anything, just because I’m a slob with power tools.”
Elita snorts.
“I’ve got more ‘weird scuffs’ across my frame than I have blank space . I’d hardly notice, and even if I did— I’d be glad to have a scar with a happy memory attached to i t. The rest of ‘em didn’t exactly originate from ‘clumsy-yet-well-meaning attending nurses.’ Catch my drift?”
Skywarp draws a servo across her face, in another strangely out-of-character affectation of anxiety, before nodding in slight acquiescence. The humor was working— she responded better to it than she had any attempt at comfort, and it served to distract her. Elita-One tries not to smirk, at the sight of the other mech’s wings flutterin g slightly, in a ( comparatively timid) display of relief and pent-up energy, even as she attempts to adopt an air of cool professionalism.
It always astounded Elita to see just how expressive Seekers were, because it seemed so vulnerable and impractical. A careful observer could capture so much data by reading into every micro-expression of their wings, which seemed to be almost entirely subconscious. Not to mention the fact that even the most cold and circumspect Vosians tended to keep a far looser hold on their E.M. fields than your average grounder.
Elita leans against the concrete wall of the underpass and sighs, exhaustion setting in. Her fuel levels were startlingly low by now, and it had been over forty megacycles since she last recharged. Skywarp takes out a small camera and displays the toolkit to it, talking at length about the newest development in their ‘journey’… as she had twice already on the trip here.
The minute changes in Skywarp’s posture indicated that the videos were intended for her trine, though she hadn’t said so directly. Elita hadn’t been bluffing, when she said that she knew Starscream loved his family— there really was something there, in the way they all lit up when they interacted. A stark brightness; a small measure of calm that permeated their entire frames.
Elita-One realizes that she sincerely misses being able to be that open and safe with the people in her own life; by now, most of them were all very cautious about allowing themselves to feel too deeply. To love one another, without the proper reservations, was a tactical misfire.
Skywarp snaps the camera off, finally, and begins to work.
Her movements are still unsteady and nervous— she attempts to jerk away, optics wide with terror, when Elita lets out a small hiss of pain at the welding tool’s first contact with her mesh… but that wouldn't work. Elita-One wraps her servo around the Seeker’s wrist lightly, and guides the tool back to the gash down her chassis.
She didn’t want to have to endure the burning sensation in her chassis any longer than she had to, regardless of her nurse’s fragile sensibilities.
Skywarp pulls herself together after that, and she’s got a light enough servo for the job, regardless — likely as a result of her lab experience. Elita’s systems are too out-of-calibration to focus on the pain (or anything at all, really) for long, so the worst of it was just the mild discomfort that accompanied the tool’s extreme temperature setting.
(Or. Rather. If we are speaking, honestly, Elita was most startled by the sensation of Skywarp’s field.)
She told herself it was a matter of cultural differences. A ‘polite distance’ to have one’s field reigned in on Vos was entirely inappropriate on Iacon. Elita pulls back, further, to attempt to compensate— but it felt like no matter where she went, Skywarp followed.
The mech in question was currently too absorbed in her task to notice, nevertheless care. Elita kept catching herself staring, stunned stupid, into thin air . Skywarp’s turbulent emotions— her earnest nerves, the lingering dread from the night’s stresses, her weighted grief and frustration that somehow coexisted at once with softer sensations of affection and self-deprecating amusement— were all somehow drowned out by something so inherent, so natural and personal that Elita couldn’t help but get lost in it.
A persistent light and warmth unlike anything else, a thrum of energy that superseded all. It was something like hope, random chance, the raw character of ‘energy’ itself— Skywarp’s vibrant life force battering at everything else standing in her way. (Elita considers, for a moment, what it must be like to feel so alive. So bright, and honest, despite their advanced age.)
Skywarp finishes her welds, and runs a digit down the neat line, a small frown forming on her face. It would leave a mark. Elita couldn’t care less.
Deciding that nothing more could be done, Skywarp steps back for a moment and flicks open a panel on her wrist, yanking out what looks startlingly like a fuel line before slicing it open with a scalpel. (Which she had been keeping in her subspace this whole time… for what, Elita-One has no idea.)
“Skywarp?”
“I don’t have energon cubes lying around, genius. Do you know just how little cargo space I have? Certainly not enough to waste carrying around extra fuel.” Skywarp covers the cut line with her digit, before she loses any more energon, her short-fused desperation making its reappearance. “Open up and don’t be a wimp about it, alright? I’ll fuse the line back together afterwards, good as new.”
Elita stares at Skywarp.
“You just cut open your arm! Why— what does ‘ open up’ even mean ? Like— my hood?”
Skywarp laughs.
“Is this some kind of weird grounder taboo I’m not tuned into? It’s not like I’m giving you pre-processed fuel, if you’re going to be a snob about that… this line is part of my auxiliary tank, it’s designed specifically for sharing as an intended part of my flight equipment. I mean, normally, I would hook up to you for this, but our equipment obviously isn’t compatible.” Skywarp holds out the line to Elita, jabbing her in the face. “Just… drink it. Like a cube.”
“Don’t you need the fuel to get back home?” Elita asks, still cautious.
“I will give you the amount I can afford to give. Just trust that I know what I’m doing and shut it, alright? You don’t need to overthink literally everything.”
Skywarp remains there, calm and unrelenting and bright — until Elita-One acquiesces. It’s deeply awkward, but Elita sees no sign of pain from the other mech… which had been her main concern. In fact, Skywarp’s engine begins to rumble happily, as if Skywarp’s frame itself was spitefully attempting to demonstrate that it was unbothered by Elita-One quite literally siphoning away its lifeforce away. (Which was wrong. Objectively… it was not the way the world was supposed to work. Elita-One had always considered it her function to help people— not to take from them, regardless of their willingness.)
It was so overwhelmingly , suffocatingly selfless. Elita-One (probably) wouldn’t have died, if Skywarp let her go without, and it stunned her that a near-stranger would ever be willing to do something like this for someone they didn’t trust or even like all that much. Elita-One wracks her processor— trying to remember the last in-person interaction she had with Skywarp, that wasn’t just the two of them silently obsessing from their respective isolated control rooms, plotting and re-plotting their faction’s movements.
(The memory is retrieved from long-term, soon enough. Skywarp had tackled Elita to the ground, and Elita-One had kicked her hard enough to leave a still-faintly visible dent in her chassis when Skywarp attempted to goad her on with cheesy banter.)
Skywarp cuts the flow of fuel, without another word exchanged. She fuses the line shut and crams it back into her arm— with none of the precision or gentle care that she had afforded her patient— and begins to wander off, craning her helm at the various concrete structures around them. They weren’t within sight of the ocean— Skywarp had stopped a mile from the coast, to try to find better cover than what the beach could provide. Currently, they were concealed within an obscure, rather hideous ditch off a roadside branching out from a major interstate.
Elita follows behind the other mech absently, still somewhat confused and exhausted, and watches as Skywarp uses some sort of oversized car tarp and a small bundle of steel cabling to string up a hammock in a shockingly short amount of time. Noticing Elita-One’s incredulous stare, Skywarp shrugs. `
“When we were on the run, we had to set up a new camp every night. I got pretty good at setting up. Don’t worry— this can easily hold three Cybertronians, in a pinch. So long as I picked a good enough structure to hang off of.” Skywarp pats the hammock. “Sit. Rest . I need to go back, to be there when Starscream… does what he must. It wouldn’t feel right to do any less— and either way, he probably needs all the help he can get to wrangle the ‘Cons and prepare for the storm that’s coming for us, when they figure out what’s happened to you.”
She’s gone in an explosion of light before Elita can say goodbye. (Or thank her, for that matter.)
******
Elita’s watching the night sky, lost in thought, when Skywarp returns. She still couldn’t understand why she hadn’t contacted the Autobots yet— the additional risks such an act would put upon the Decepticon’s ‘plan’ did not outweigh her duty to her army, to the truth itself. It was antithetical to everything she believed, and yet…
Somehow, the answer was exceedingly simple. Elita-One was maintaining radio silence solely because they had asked her to. Starscream had judged it the safest way to manage this suicide mission , and Skywarp had agreed with him. (Skywarp, who had carried Elita hundreds of miles across the country, and who worried over leaving scars in her already worn-down mesh, and who was willing to cede control of her own fuel lines for Elita’s continued safety and health. She had been gentle and accommodating for very little reason at all, in retrospect, while grappling with so much suffering and pressure .)
The Elite Trine were not who Elita had reduced them to over the years, moving variables in the sky that threatened everything she believed in. She knew, had known all along, that this was true for all of the Decepticons— that they were all people, at the end of the day. The endless, exhausting horror that came with the mundanity of war could only wear away the humanity of one’s opponents for so long… and Elita was no good at lying. Not even to herself.
Elita-One realizes with a start that she could never sit in the tactician’s chair ever again. That she would never.
An explosion of energy nearby draws her attention, and she sits up, joints creaking painfully, to watch for Skywarp.
Stray sparks of electric charge gleam in the darkness and slough off of Skywarp’s wings like water; her face is cast into shadow, expression grim and defeated. The excess of charge causes her plating to almost glow, in its sorry state of overexertion, and her frame trembles like every element that made Skywarp herself had spontaneously de-stabilized and come away with minds of their own. Somehow, the sight is capable of being both pitiful and frightening in its own right.
Skywarp lands lightly on her struts, as always, but her footsteps are uneven and slow. She reaches the hammock, and lets out a small sigh.
“… could you please move over?” She asks, softly. Elita pauses, in the foggy confusion of pseudo-stasis (genuinely) disbelieving of the fact that Skywarp intends to cuddle up to an Autobot she’s fought countless times on the battlefield. Wasn’t she worried about being killed in her sleep? Not even a little bit? Elita wouldn’t, of course, but she could see the tactical advantage. Skywarp picks up on her expression, evidently, and scowls. “You grounders and your Primus- forsaken personal space. Ridiculous !”
Elita huffs.
“ Would you stop calling me a— “ Elita-One’s statement is cut short as Skywarp swings a leg over the edge of the hammock and dumps herself unceremoniously into Elita’s lap, her genuine frustration and exhaustion clear by the lash of her field alone.
Elita slams her knee-joint into Skywarp’s chassis, by reflex, and Skywarp grabs her by the pauldrons and shoves, hard— knocking them both flat out of the hammock and onto the hard ground, plating screeching over concrete. The hammock floats sadly to the ground behind them, but Elita’s too busy reeling from the impact to care.
Everything goes still.
“ Knock it off, alright? ” Elita snaps. “It’s not going to make you feel better, Skywarp. Nothing will.”
As Elita’s adrenaline drains away, the press of Skywarp’s field becomes clearer. The anger present is so weak it’s hardly noticeable anymore, in comparison to the crushing fear and grief concealed within. Skywarp shifts, above Elita, still crouched over her frame like a cyberbeast prepared to kill.
“I…” Skywarp lowers her helm, in shame, casting her face into shadow once again. “I don’t know why I did that.”
“I do.” Elita responds, softly. She presses her servo to the small expanse of flat plating between Skywarp’s wings, encouraging the Seeker to let go of the tension in her frame that still kept her upright. Reluctantly, cautiously , Skywarp allows herself to lie flat against the other mech’s frame, silent tears streaming down her face. She couldn’t put on a strong front any longer, not in face of what she thought had been her final goodbye to her brother.
Elita knew. She had lost so much, to the war, felt responsible for so much of it that she had already done half the grieving for her remaining friends left— in preparation for when it might be their time to leave. She thought about their absence every time they were near, calculated the logistics of what she would have to do with them gone, hardened her spark to the world in fear of it.
(Somehow, Skywarp had never shut herself off, for all these years, and survived the loss all the same. Elita didn’t believe it was possible.)
Skywarp stills, under Elita’s servos, field oscillating sharply between emotions, the feeling of it all nearly overwhelming to Elita… even secondhand. Cautiously— Elita begins to pet her wings, hoping that it can bring some small comfort. (Even though Elita didn’t know what she was doing ( and the gesture was not of her world at all), even though Skywarp despised a great deal of what she stood for. It’s meant to be in some small form an apology , for something so vast and unforgivable it felt insulting to even try.)
The fear in Skywarp’s field softens, slightly, and her engine begins to purr again… but the sensation of her longing only grows greater. Elita understands. Skywarp wishes she was with her trine, instead. It was hardly a personal thing.
The two of them are silent under the stars, for a very long time.
“… I remember when we were younger even than the Terrans are now, and we slept in this awful, cramped one-room facility. The port’s entire stock of Seekers— I think it was twenty-some trines, all in all— in one place. You had one hammock for each trine, and we were all right up against one another, pretty much. Like pallets of freight in a cargo-liner.” Skywarp speaks, quietly, into the crook of Elita’s neck. A soft, pathetic laugh croaks its way out of her vocalizer. “We’d kick each other in the night, and fight over space— not to mention how unbearably hot it would get with all those engines in one place. I still miss it. I’m sure most of it’s just missing being a sparkling, but having them near was important, too. There aren’t anywhere near sixty total Vosians alive, anymore; they were family, too.”
“I am… glad that you can find some joy in those memories.” Elita’s voice tightens, slightly, at the thought of such blatant neglect going unchecked. The word ‘stock’ to refer to newsparks sticks in her processor, uncomfortably. “I cannot help but think that they had a responsibility to keep you in safer conditions. I understand that— problems like that are why so many Seekers chose to be Decepticons. I can’t forgive the way that things turned out, but in the beginning, I almost couldn’t blame any of you. For being angry. For demanding better, and being tired of being told to shut up and deal with it.”
Skywarp trills, softly— Elita thinks she might be muttering something in Vosian, but it’s not intended for her audials, so she lets it go. Skywarp shifts slowly, into Elita, as if to urge her to continue petting her wings.
“I don’t know what anyone expected. We were manufactured to fight. Or— maybe it was that we were taught to fight, instead. Being a cargo-escort, or a Seeker in general… is difficult, because everything you do becomes about biology instead of your spark, when someone else is trying to figure out what makes you tick.” Skywarp’s field flickers, darkly, at that. “ If you’re treacherous, it’s because you’re a warframe. If you’re a coward, it’s because you were born property , and never given courage of your own . If you’re quick to anger it’s because of your brutal nature… but if you ever choose to stop fighting and let go— it just indicates you’re a typically indecisive flight frame . Intelligence morphs into ‘Seeker Cunning’ … and somehow stupidity is taken as just as natural , just as universal to ‘your kind.’ As a result, I don’t know who I am; how much of it is actually me, a person , versus how much of it really can be blamed on ‘forged instinct.’”
Elita’s servo stills, for a moment, at Skywarp’s back.
“ All of yourself is you !” Elita responds, fiercely. “I have never met an opponent like you, never witnessed a spark so filled with energy and color and life. Never question your worth at the behest of— long-offlined cowards.”
Skywarp’s wings begin to relax, lowering to a more natural state at her back. Sleep seems to come easily to her after that, despite the excitement of the last few megacycles… leaving Elita alone, beneath the stars, pondering the logic of her actions once again.
Her spark thrums just a little bit faster than usual, to keep in tune with the soft susurration of Skywarp’s engine, and her servos continue to move gently across Skywarp’s back and wings, as if to pre-emptively smooth away the stresses that were sure to return at the break of dawn.