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Sometimes, Blue thinks about Before.
Before the Bad Thing happened. Before Sire and Carrier changed.
To be honest, Blue did not remember the Bad Thing all that well. He knew it came back regularly in his recharge fluxes, plaguing him with bad dreams, but most of the time the memories vanished like foam on the wind as soon as he properly woke up.
His creators were happy to hear that, yet some impressions remained.
The place from Before was called Praxus, he knew that. In his memory, it was both bright and calming, the crystals blooming and whispering all around, the air clear. In what remained of his nightmares, it was dark, cracked, and dirty, corners filled with gray disarrayed shapes of mechs, the air stuffy with smoke.
Now, the den he shares with Carrier is so, so big and deep and easily to drown in – it’s like a little separate world inside their habsuite. Somehow, this giant lake of softness just feels as safe as the nest from Before, which was a bit cramped and its softness was swallow, but it fit the three of them, and it was home. The new nest can fit so much more, but it’s almost always only Blue and his creators here, and sometimes Smokey, although another blue mech with an older sparkling in tow, whose name is a glyph so curvy, whimsical, and choral, that Blue has no hope of getting right, sometimes spends the night.
Although the den is a fairly new thing, it feels like it has been here forever, but no. Just after the Bad Thing, Carrier had been fleeting here and there, disappearing for long periods of time, leaving Blue with Sire, or Smokey, or in the little makeshift portable nest of bedding. After the den appeared in their new home, Carrier rarely left it after setting it up. Blue certainly saw the appeal, as he crawl-swam through the mass of bedding.
Where was he? Oh right, the before.
Before, Carrier mostly talked to Blue about whenever, and now, he almost always sings to him. In Blue’s humble opinion, Carrier is the greatest singer in the world.
But sometimes, sometimes, when Blue was submerged in the fabrics and listening to Carrier trilling like a lilleth, feeling perfectly safe, he thought back on his worst nightmares.
In them, he is hurt, and his Sire is carrying him in his arms. His field covers Blue and ripples in the manner he used to do, so lively and almost mirrorlike to him, attempting to soothe, while his optics survey some unknown distance. Blue thinks he hears screams and thunder in the distance, while flames paint the clouds of dust and smoke in vivid hues.
There is a great pillar of fire in the distance, blooming out of a tower with its dome destroyed. It quickly passes Blue’s sight.
The streets are littered with grey shapes of mechs strewn around once again. Sire holds him tight, his usually bright field feeling weak and muffled and hurt. And it’s wavering.
Eventually, Sire’s shaky steps arrive at some sort of darkened building, and they hide in the shade. Sire collapses near a wall, his vents’ frantic rattling becoming quieter and quieter. And yet, his field, feeling impossibly distant, tells Blue to wait. So, he waits and waits in his sire’s arms, until he hears the pedesteps usually signifying the beginning of the nightmare’s end.
Sire enters the ruins from a hole in the wall, murmuring something indistinct for Blue’s busted hearing and looking. He once again is looking upon something way beyond Blue, but then dutifully plucks him up from the rubble and settles him in his arms, his field the correct frequency, perfectly steady and calm. Usually, this is the point when he wakes up if the nightmare is not especially vicious, but sometimes he twists a bit in the hold, and looks over Sire’s shoulder and another Sire is here, sitting on the rubble, grey.
He usually needs extra time meshing fields with his Sire’s to calm down from those awakenings.
Does that mean that there was a Before Sire? A Before Carrier, even?
Sire’s field seems the same, aside from the different patterns, calm, steady, and reliable. He is not as energetic as before, but neither is Blue after that night. And yet, warring with doubt, Blue knows, even if he is very small, as Carrier likes to remind him when he is not singing, he has good optics, almost as good as Sire sometimes.
And he can see perfectly well that his creators love him, so he is not worried. And the bad dreams are forgotten as soon as he climbs down a hill of pillows.
The song changes into something more melodic, and also climatic, as Carrier notices him. Carrier’s visor is up, so several pairs of mismatched optics behold Blue at once.
In his arms, Carrier is clutching a shape – elongated, with edges soft and round, looking somewhat like a pillow, or a bag. It was made of a translucent metal, allowing the glow of the cloudy, almost opaque Energon from inside it to gently spill out.
Inside the casing, the partially assembled frame of Blue’s Sibling slept on, floating along their Carrier’s voice and moving gently, only a vague, mismatched silhouette of it visible.
Blue came closer, to bask in Carrier’s happy-happy field, and maybe take a third nap of the day, when Carrier finished the song and chirped a greeting to him. And just as Blue chirped back, he sat up and made his careful way to the exit of the Den.
Only... Unlike almost every orn before, Carrier left the sparkling casing tucked in the bedding. Carrier had taken his sibling every time he needed to leave the Den.
There was no feeling of danger. Carrier did not warn him in any way. And still, the Sibling was left alone for a bit.
So, Blue practically dashed over to his Sibling.
Well, technically not his Sibling yet, but soon to be.
Blue did not know how much time he had, so he tried to be careful, and just poked the casing – Carrier said it was alright when he did that.
Then he followed with petting the casing. Poked a bit more. Pet a bit more.
And then just laid his servo’s palm fully upon the casing. Held it there. And listened to his Sib’s field.
Carrier said that other mecha could catch encased sparkling’s field already, but mostly read them as sleepy and muddled.
That description was nothing like his Sib’s field. Sure, it felt distant, like a landscape in a dream you’re already forgetting, but it was certainly here, bright and steady, feeling like a fresh breeze in spring.
Blue reached back with his owl field, still a bit jagged, spotty, and cracky at the edges after the Bad Thing, and envelops the egg the best he can, pushing his joy and excitement and affection…
And his Sibling-to-be responded in what weren’t quite proper emotions yet, but together felt like rising wind in the crystals and sunshine on plating.
So Blue tugged with his field, and received an answer, and tugged again, and got an answer for some time.
And then Blue laughed. Not very loudly, but he laughed, and laughed like he hasn’t since the Bad Thing. His servos were poking and petting the casing in a pattern slowly.
And with a smile on his face, Blue embraced his still-encased sibling and buried the two of them back in the bedding, fields interwoven perfectly with a little, developing one.
If you would have told Prowl of a hundred vorns before he would have the berth second best to the Prime’s, he would not believe you. Or he would crash, which was not optimal.
Well, the berth technically was, formerly, Prime’s – Optimus and Elita were both several classes larger the last Prime, and this required a much larger berth to accommodate them both, and therefore chose to give the old furniture away to Prowl as a benediction of sorts as soon as he informed them of himself undergoing conjunx ritus. Better it see some use then gather dust, said Optimus back then, all while standing in front of Prown’s suite on the Ark and holding the, rather obstructive, unit of furniture in question.
Prowl sometimes very much appreciated working directly under Optimus, needless to say.
It was a large, circular berth, which could easily sit several Praxian Enforcer models. It was, as customary in the middle Golden Age and beyond, dish-shaped, dipping inwards slightly, so any bedding, coverings and pillows would not spill. An arch crossed the expanse of it, to hang canopies, support structures and other draping for additional privacy.
And currently it was used to its fullest potential.
Prowl did not know how, where or when Jazz acquired that amount of textile material. He also was pretty lost on the names of some of the fabrics involved – he was 79.44% sure that some of the blankets came from a specific allied biomechanical world – and he suspected that for once Jazz also was, because the selection was based on only two qualities: wherever the fabric was both soft and sturdy.
There was steelsilk, and there was organic silk, and there was spun crystalline webbing from asteroid-dwelling creatures, and simple carbonweave, and cadmium alloy thread, and braided bast from metalline trees, and all of it composed the staggering amount of blankets, duvets, mats, pillows and covers, the proper number of which is known only to Jazz. A dome tent of veils incorporating incredibly thin-cut, transparent scales of natively orbital creatures and the strands of a material somewhat resembling ice with the texture of clay in its raw state. All of which had been treated to be resistant to fire, acid, harsh noise, poison and bullets.
Inside, behind the folds of many curtains, there was a tiny paradise composed of several mounds of pillows reinforced with duvets, arranged with intent in some sort of pattern too incomprehensible for Prowl’s feeble tactical genius, all surrounding a central warren on a blanket-trailing volcano-like pillow-hill.
Despite the seemingly confusing setup, this warm little world of a nest was extremely comfortable to burrow in. Prowl could recharge in kata poses and come out not sore. His doorwings would go numb only because of the constant involuntary happy fluttering, which began every time he entered his family nest’s embrace.
He felt slightly less embarrassed about this after witnessing the same behavior from Bluestreak, when the sparkling poked around the beddings.
But the best part of The Nest was, undoubtedly, its architect and primary ruler, who could mostly be found those cycles after their sparkling’s emergence inside his central den, as he was right now.
Curled around and clutching the rounded, semi-transparent protoform casing.
Inside the casing, which was almost alarmingly large but still within specs according to Ratchet, soft and malleable fresh protoform enveloped a not-so-tiny-at-this-point spark and floated around in gestational energon.
Jazz, even several chords after bringing the egg casing into the world, really did not like letting his sparkling out of his sight, and also did not trust incubators of any sorts, leading to him nurturing it rather traditionally.
He would carry it with him anywhere, yet also rarely left his little comfy lair, preferring to mostly rest in-between providing the casing with spare materials every chance. He trilled and purred to it every waking klik. And, sometimes, he would pounce on Prowl and give him their child to his conjunx to hold.
As honored as Prowl felt, he literally, physically could not feel half of the parental drive currently consuming Jazz in an almost feral frenzy – that was actually the second reason why they agreed that Jazz would gestate – but the periods holding the larger-than-expected casing in his servos, watching his sparkling’s silhouette moving inside became his favorite.
Even if contemplating the tiny life he helped bring into this world cut into his already reduced productivity.
His other favorite part of this transitional, transient part of his life was the standing invitation to brood over the casing together with Jazz. He rarely took it up, as paternal leave or not he still has duties, but he did indulge from time to time.
And each time he joined Jazz around the casing, in the middle of their continental plate of bedding, he came out of the experience happy.
Simply, very, happy.
And very rarely he could manage to find, at the same time as himself, both Jazz and Bluestreak in the spot in the nest.
Usually, Blue was his dependable assistant in providing care for Jazz – himself a very young sparkling, only have reached his second framing by now, Bluestreak spent a lot of time in the Nest with Jazz, and was the only other living mech nearby, apart from Prowl and Smokescreen, who was allowed to touch the casing.
And Bluestreak was enamored with his cousin.
Or at this point, his sibling.
As much as Prowl wanted Silverstreak’s progeny to remember his actual sire, Bluestreak was orphaned only a few chords after hatching, and appeared to carry almost no memory of his birth parents.
At this point, there is no use in dwelling on that. All but three of Praxus’ primary servers completely perished in the bombing. Silverstreak personally entrusted Prowl with his sparkling’s fate.
Now Prowl has to put in his best effort, because Bluestreak is one of Praxus’ very last children, and Silverstreak was a good mech that deserved nothing less than the best.
Not like it’s a particularly hard task – Bluestreak is a little angel.
But something is bit different when he steps inside the habsuite this evening.
Jazz is sitting on their berth’s edge, holding up the curtaining, colorful and translucent sheets. There is a couple of almost empty cubes on his lap and a rather stark lack of an egg anywhere near his person – a rare, but observable phenomenon, considering he started to sometimes leave it when getting Energon or other supplies. And he is watching whatever is happening in the Nest pretty intently.
And then Jazz’s doorwings twitched, and then waved him over with a greeting. The spymaster had his servo up in an Ops sign for maintaining silence.
Prowl, on reflex, signed back acknowledgement, upon which Jazz replied, still in sign, with “look at this” and pointed at somewhere in the depths of the berth.
At first, Prowl is unable to discern what is Jazz so overjoyed about – and his sparkmate is overjoyed, broadcasting in both bond and field – even with his advanced sensory suite, as the outer curtains are basically one-way mirrors, but as soon as he can look directly over Jazz’s shoulder, he sees it.
At the edge of the warren, laying half-buried in sheets, is the sparkling casing.
With Bluestreak’s recharging form wrapped around it.