Chapter Text
If there's anything that comes pre-installed with an undiagnosed brain; it is the lack of time awareness. An hour could pass and Miko would have none the wiser. An entire week could fly by and suddenly she’ll snap back into reality, and try to remember what she had done those past few days—if anything at all.
That sorta changes though when you’re in an active hostage situation. Miko is distinctly aware of how long she’s been gone. While she’s not the best at estimating—she places her disappearance at a good eighteen hours now. Almost an entire day. How fun! Give it one more day, and the local law enforcement will throw her file in the trash!
Though, knowing Fowler, he’s probably pulled his own strings to keep this foreign-alien kidnapping on the D.L... Miko wonders how long it’ll take her host-parents to start getting suspicious. She gives it three days tops—they were awfully sweet, and overly protective to the point she felt like they didn’t know she wasn’t technically blood related.
Anyhow.. where was she? Ah, right, time. The thing that comes for everyone and everything. And currently? It was after her stomach.
Miko rolled onto her side, letting out another groan in displeasure as she curled her legs up into her chest. The fetal position was a familiar one that was trading spots with the starfish for the past hour or so. Miko regrets only having a bag of potato chips for lunch and a semi-flat pop the hour prior to her kidnapping.
She flopped onto her back with a loud sigh, whining audibly as she thrashed her legs around—completely embarrassing herself yet she found herself too hungry to care. She’ll throw a whole tantrum if she must! Hunger causes a headache, and then she loses all her energy, and then she gets tired…but she can’t sleep when she’s hungry—
“Are you going to do that for the rest of this interrogation?”
Miko snarled at Breakdown. The mech across the room occasionally throws his helm back to spare her a glance. Probably to make sure she hasn’t gotten up and ran off again..or died. It was most definitely for both. Miko rolled over again onto her stomach, pressing her face into the faux’ mesh she had settled herself on. She was back in the mech’s private quarters—though this time thankfully not under the cursed cage of a fishbowl.
Rather, Breakdown had fished out some dusty little piece of scrap he found lying in some junk drawer, and deemed it semi-comfortable for the human. Miko didn’t care. Anything remotely soft was better than hard metal right now. She wonders if she begs enough Breakdown will let her sleep in his seats?
The thought of it makes her miss Bulk’s faux leather seats. The material is just remotely familiar enough to actual leather that one wouldn’t mistake it for something alien. Miko, however, knows it all too well. She misses tracing the customized texture carved into the seats, and how Bulk would blast the AC on her when she fell asleep—knowing the cold always kept her dreaming.
Though the Nemesis wasn’t cold—it was freezing. The kind that wormed its way under her skin and deep into her bones. Miko rattled against the surface she deemed her current death bed—given she’s already made the assumption that she’ll probably die of hypothermia rather than hunger.
“I thought you bots had a thing against the cold,” she remarks, pouting as Breakdown continues his idle, boring scroll on a datapad. She’d ask what it was about, but to be completely honest..she didn’t care. All Miko could care about was finding a way to cure the grumble in her stomach.
If only Bulkhead was here. He’d open up his glovebox and boom! A snack ripe for the picking. Her slight snacking habit had gotten right onto Jackie’s radar, so Miko expects it now when he too pops open a small compartment on his armor to a bag of whatever ‘human nutrients’ he had gotten his servos on.
One time it had been genuine wheat. Miko laughed so hard she had completely forgot how hungry she had been at the time.
Nothing was funny here, though, just monochromatic and moody.
“I can hear your processor conspiring,” Breakdown interrupted Miko’s silent brooding as he finally placed the datapad down. Turning to approach her new little seat atop the desk she had become all too familiar with. The cursed fishbowl still sat across the table, flipped over and untouched.
It better stay that way.
“My brain,” Miko corrected a tad bit too smugly, as if human anatomy meant anything to the mech. She crossed her arms. A frustration building up slowly begins to pour out of her mouth. “I’m bored. It’s cold. I’m hungry. I’m tired! And I don’t even have my phone to distract me—!”
Her words quickened towards the end as she suddenly flopped over back onto her side. She blinked furiously at the dark metal walls of the room. Hoping for a moment they’d change to a natural, rocky exterior of a canyon. She wished the sand would get in her eyes and shoes, so she could complain loudly to Bulkhead and he’d remark simply that it’d been her own fault.
She was always running off on her own. Sticking her nose in business that was better off left alone.
Look where that got her.
‘I wanna go home,’ she thinks, because verbally she’s been saying that for the past eighteen hours one way or another. The words don’t feel real anymore on her tongue. She wants to go home. To her bed swaddled in thirty quilted blankets. To her cat’s back with her parents in Japan. To mimicking leather seats and cold AC.
The fantasy dream of aliens comes crashing down when you realize it wasn’t all bashing fights and grand adventures.
Miko snaps herself out of it by the prickling sensations of eyes on her. She looks up to see an eye—optic—staring at her. Breakdown has a weird expression on his faceplates. One she hasn’t seen before—like, ever. It’s so odd in-fact, it somehow makes her borderline self-induced, panic fizzle out before it could even burst.
“Stop it,” she says more as a question than a demand. Breakdown’s optic shuttered at her, and, without breaking a beat—kneeled at the edge of the desk. Suddenly he got all too big all too quickly, and Miko’s heart lurched right into her throat. These guys need to realize how ginormous they are once in a while! Less they want to give the humans around them a heart attack.
Knowing Cons, though, that might just be the next strategy to get the Bots to bend to their will….or something dramatic like that. Miko shrugs away the thought distracting her from the massive metal mech now staring right at her.
“Your core temperature is roughly six degrees below human average. My internal regulators will warm you up. Get on.”
With that, Breakdown placed his arm on the desk. Rather than the open palm he’s been offering to carry her around with. Reasonable, of course, if not a bit demeaning and scary. He could easily forget she was there and—
‘Yuck! Miko, think happy thoughts! Monster trucks and bloody mosh pits!’
Breakdown’s vocalizers crackle again in her ear, “Kid. Listen to me.”
Miko eyes him silently. Breakdown vents, and as if to show her—pats his armored arm in a path up to his shoulder. “You won’t fall. I haven’t dropped you yet, have I?”
“Technically you did—“
“You jumped.”
“Did not!”
“Get on. You’re shaking like you’ve popped a tread.”
And despite the need for independence a girl her age yearns for. Miko all but skitters towards the giant metal limb the moment she’s done brooding about being treated like a child. She expected a shiver to run through her the second her hands touched the armor, but rather being faced with the equal competitor to Antarctica—she’s met with..warmth.
A heat bubbling beneath a dark blue surface. Just hot enough it leaves her earlier slow fingers blooming with enough heat to defrost them. Miko doesn’t hesitate any longer in treating Breakdown like her own personal jungle gym. She slams her big boots onto his arm and heaves herself up. All the while she can feel his gold optic tracking her every movement.
Watching. Waiting. He promised to not let her fall, and maybe it’s a bit ridiculous, but she’s inclined to believe the mech despite his known favor for deception.
Breakdown’s exterior is easy to traverse, ironically enough. He’s a lot more geometric compared to the sleekness of his partner. Miko wonders how challenging a climb Knock Out would be, but quickly corrects the thought with the obvious answer. He’d smush her just for leaving a fingerprint on his finish. A scuff mark from her shoes? She’d be flattened roadkill.
There are little grooves here and there that allow Miko to swiftly make it to her destination. Right by Breakdown’s helm, near where his neck cables end and ‘shoulder’ starts. Where she could feel the faint thrum of something otherworldly underneath his chassis.
Just like human hearts, every spark beats to its own rhythm. Where Bulkhead’s is steady and drawn out, Breakdown’s is erratically fast. Loud almost. It drowns out every other thought in her head.
Miko settles down in a small indent on his armor. It doesn’t look natural—like a part of a cosmetic injury that was missed during the exam. Nevertheless she cozies herself up against the soothing heat radiating off the mech. Breakdown doesn’t move until she’s properly situated and still for more than a minute.
And just like that she’s calm. The almost constant, stressing beat of Breakdown’s spark catches her attention every other second—leaving her no room to think about the empty pit in her stomach. Or her ever growing paranoia of being thrown out of an airlock. Or the fact she’ll probably run out of fake information, and be promptly crushed on sight—
Whirring. It’s as if the grooves on a vinyl had recorded a million metal pedes pounding against the ground. It spins and thrums with each second. It’s nothing like she’s ever heard before.
What a peaceful sound.
She wonders if Bulk will let her sample his own. She wonders if she could convince every bot back at base to let her snag a listen. Who knew an intergalactic civilization could be so intertwined with music, that they live through the bass of their own sparks.
“Why’re you so nice?” Miko blurts out without thinking. Her words should’ve been taken as a flat out lie. Breakdown was not nice. He was a Decepticon through and through! He snatched her up for the purpose of using her as bait for the Autobots. He threatened to harm her if she didn’t answer his questions. He was anything but nice!
Breakdown is frozen for a moment. Miko giggles at the thought of him having to reboot, and stifles her short lived chuckle when the mech’s optic shuttered off completely. The room no longer accompanied by a distinct, golden glow.
“I’m not nice, kid.”
“I know, but you didn’t want me to freeze. That’s pretty nice.”
“You’re useless to us dead.”
“I think you’re just telling yourself that.”
“You got something to imply, bitlit?”
“What does that even mean?”
Breakdown huffs, “Means a pain in my aft.”
Miko puffs back out, challengingly, “Blah. I’m funny. You regret picking me up, right?”
“And let you freeze to death?”
“No, from my friends. From the bots. You should’ve taken Mr. Tech Wizz, or Boss Bot’s favorite—“
“They weren’t you.” Breakdown interrupts, optic shuttering in a way that makes it looks like it’s on the fritz. He turns away to stare at a monochromatic wall—the only empty spot in the room. Everything else is covered in panels of shelves of holographic pictures and datapads. Miko twists her hands together, picking at the skin on the side of her nails—trying not to breathe as if that’ll scare the words right back down Breakdown’s intake.
“Their front-liners are less likely to listen when one of their own is gone. Bulk’s not good on the field when he’s worried,” Breakdown explains, trailing over to the desk to lean his weight against it. Miko wants to reach for a phone that isn’t there, see a picture of the first day they met. It had been an unsuspecting one—Ratchet had made her delete it, but she always had backups.
Bulkhead had looked at her with such awe and worry. That something like him could so easily harm something like her. She was fragile in his eyes. Something worth protecting. Maybe she wanted to be selfish and see that look one more time.
“It made sense to disrupt a team’s performance for an ambush.”
Miko’s heart drops to her stomach, and in that moment she’s reminded of where she is in the world. Who she’s next to. What they’ve done and what they could do. Breakdown’s golden glow shines on her now, his helm turned to watch her reaction. Pick at any information she might be hiding behind her distraught expression. She cowers.
“Tell me about the artifacts. Tell me about the scenic route to your friend’s base. Tell me something, Miko, so I don’t have to do this.”
“You still would,” she finds herself biting back, “It doesn’t matter what I say.”
“Yes it does. Tell me anything, the serial codes for those undercover, the location of a base far out on another planet, Prime’s favored weapon! I’m trying to help you!” Breakdown’s words reach the point of yelling, and Miko is swiftly jostled off of her seat—she slides down Breakdown’s slanted chassis. Her hands burn with the sudden friction of metal on skin.
Though right when she think she’s about to fly over the edge, two servos cup beneath her. While it hurts to land against, it isn’t the ground, so there was some positive.
“Bulkhead’s going to try and break through our groundbridge. He’s predictable, he always has been. He’ll be looking for you.”
Breakdown digits twitch, and Miko feels her heart jump and every small ‘jerk’ just out of the corner of her eye.
“I can prevent that. I’ll keep him from coming aboard—where a whole army is ready to take revenge on the Bot’ that smashed the troops before them.”
Miko wants to scoff, tell a joke that might lighten the black hole opening in her stomach—an endless pit that is pulling her vocal cords down. So nothing but a squeaky, short, “Seems like overkill,” is released.
“Wreckers are hard to kill. I would know.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” but he would. He totally would. That’s why Miko feels more terrified than she’s ever felt during this whole ordeal. For the safety of the mech who could hold his own, rather than her head. Bulkhead would tear this ship apart looking for her, and he could so easily be overwhelmed. She’s seen it before.
Miko doesn’t want to be at fault for that. She can’t come back to the silo, knowing she was the reason for the capture—because death sounded too permanent—for their heaviest, most loyal soldier.
“I’ve known that mech for millions of years. We’ve been enemies for far longer than your planet’s been around,” Breakdown snaps, “He’ll come for you. The only way to stop it is to tell me what I want to know.”
“I can’t—“
“You can’t? Or you won’t?”
“They’re my friends—“
“You’re a liability to them.”
“I’m not doing this to them!”
“Remember our deal, kid—“
“Fuck our deal! Screw you!“
Breakdown’s grip turns from loose to suffocating. She’s thrown into one palm as every digit wraps around her—the wind in her lungs is lost as she gasps for air from the speed. Miko wiggles in his fist, trying to get a hand free so she can mimic a paper bag over her mouth; something to do anything to get oxygen back into her lungs.
“I could kill you. I should. Bulkhead would be none the wiser. Your death would not prevent his. I’m giving you one last chance, girl, tell me something useful.”
Miko’s eyes prick with a tingling heat. Kicking her legs in a desperate struggle as her breathing picks up. “No!”
“Miko. I’m trying to help you—!”
“They’ll be so mad. They’ll hate me. I’m always screwing stuff up-!”
“We can save a life. Ain’t that your Autobot’s way?”
“Shut up—!”
Her face met his all too uncomfortably close. Miko felt the heat radiate off of him in a way that hadn’t felt comfortable just moments before. He could burn her. He would to get what their cause needed. She doesn’t want— she couldn’t— not to them—
She didn’t want this to happen. She didn’t think this is where she’d end up when jumping on that bike alongside Jack. She wants to go home.
“Tell me.”
Miko feels a sob leave her.
“Okay.”
A simple word lets her breathe again. Breakdown’s grip loosens immediately, and she falls onto his palm with a sulk. She drags her knees upwards to hide her wet, red face.
“You’re doing a good thing.”
No she isn’t. It doesn’t feel like it. ‘What is she doing?’
“Breathe, kid. You humans need air, right?”
‘Don’t talk to me like that, it’s not fair. You can’t do that now.’
“There we go, nice and steady. You recover faster than some of the soldiers I’ve seen.”
‘Why am I listening? Why are you so similar—?’
Miko rubs her eyes against her wrists, sniffling as she pulls her knees impossibly closer to her chest. She digs her boots into Breakdown’s servos, hoping it’ll do something to get back at the mech. It doesn’t, but it’s the intention that matters, anyway.
The creaks and churns of the ship fill the silence between the pair as Miko catches her breath. All the while Breakdown continues to just stare at her like she made the right choice. Maybe she did; in a way far too complicated for her to think about right now. Would Bulkhead be happy about her choice? What would the others think? Would Jack or Raf do this?
Could they be stronger than she was?
“I’ll put you down—“
“No.”
“Okay.”
Breakdown’s digits aren’t twitching anymore, Miko notices when she turns her head to rest her cheek on her knees. They’re frozen solid. She scowls internally, her face too tired to show any meaningful hatred that’ll be taken as such. Rather than just a simple joke. “There’s this valley somewhere East.”
She’s only been a few hundred times, nothing serious. At first she had tagged along Optimus’ trailer, because she just had to know where he kept disappearing off too. Her disappointment was immeasurable when she came to learn it was a simple cave they used to store the energon they couldn’t keep in the silo. Then, after begging Ratchet, Bulkhead, Bumblebee, and Arcee to let her tag along every time one of them went—it just became routine.
“Energon supply. They keep it away from base, in case, y’know..” Miko mimics an explosion with her mouth and hands. “Compromised.”
“You know how to work coordinates?”
“Isn’t East enough?”
“How about you take me there, instead?”
Miko pauses, and her lizard-brain is now sending every instinct remaining in this advanced mammal body to run. Escape. Hide. Cower! Wait for safety. Wait for someone to come save you.
“Then, I’ll see about sending you back to Prime and his crew.”
“You—“
“There’s one thing you have to keep in mind about war, kid. Make yourself useful, but don’t make yourself important.”
‘A bit late for that piece of advice,’ she’d remark if she wasn’t currently two seconds away from hyperventilating again.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how to get there. I don’t know so just—“ ‘Throw me out. Give me up. Let me go home.’ “—forget it.”
Breakdown can sense the half-truths hiding on her tongue. Miko curses her insane lack of fibbing as she’s suddenly pulled upwards—far too close for comfort yet again. Breakdown keeps his palms open and flat, but his stare makes her feel as though she’s stuck again. Kept against her will and frozen till her body decides it’s safe enough to thaw. ‘Even a twitch would kill them,’ instincts say when face to face with a predator.
Then, Breakdown huffs—an obvious hint of frustration in his vocalizer as the glow of his optic dims, “Fine.”
Miko glances up, fingernails picking at her arms uneasily as she tucks herself tighter into her seat.
“It ain’t fun watching a sparkling’ tremble'. You’re off the hook for now, squishy.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Breakdown doesn’t even give her the satisfaction of a response, instead he tilts his hands—despite promising not to let her fall—and lets her slide back onto the desk. Miko prepared for the departure, and hit the desk on her feet with a slight ‘uof.’ She kept her hands close to her chest, feeling the heavy, rapid beat of her heart pump sporadically with every silent pulse of a second.
The ship is an unnatural quiet. Miko couldn’t even feel the presence of another pair of optics on them. She couldn’t even hear the slightest echo of a voice outside the room. She couldn’t even imagine it if she wanted to. It was as if everything had just gone dark.
“Y’know the rules,” Breakdown said to her in a semi-mocking tone. Miko wanted to scream at him that she’ll find a way to rip his wires into ribbons to decorate her future metal concert costumes with, but lacks the ability to do so—what with the lump of fear in her throat. She settles with an all too familiar glare as the mech looks at her once, and then heads for the door.
The door slides shut after a moment. Cutting her off from the ship’s alien world, and a warm gold turned burn as Breakdown disappears out of sight. Miko stands there unmoving.
“What did I do?”
‘To deserve this?’
‘To my friends?’
Two questions go unanswered.
“What can I do?”
‘To fix this?’
‘To save myself?’
And outside the ship a storm begins to warp the winds.