Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy
Lighten up while you still can…
We may lose and we may win
Though we will never be here again
So open up, I’m climbin’ in

The Eagles, Take it Easy

“Oh. Oh, god.”

Verity looked up from her plate, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

Springer’s holomatter human avatar sat across the table from her, staring wide-eyed at the piece of bacon he held in his hand. “This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted in my entire life.”

Verity laughed, relieved. “Great. Just… try not to say that kind of thing so loud, ok? You can probably get away with it about bacon, but losing it over a glass of milk is going to draw the wrong kind of attention.” She returned her own attention to her plate of eggs and bacon, admittedly overjoyed at the ability to once again eat without feeling like she was going to puke it all up five minutes later.

Springer continued to savor his bacon as covertly as possible, but couldn’t help himself from ordering seconds. He fidgeted while he waited, slowly spinning his glass of orange juice on the table with one hand, scratching at the back of his neck with the other. “I could eat that stuff all day.”

“Won’t it, like, clog up the pipes or anything?”

“Nope. All those hydrocarbons? I can actually convert that to something useful.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder in the vague direction of his actual self parked outside in the frigid Alaskan morning. “Primus knows I’m not gonna’ get shit for solar here.”

“Stuff at the pumps not to your liking?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “It’s ok. A little gritty. Knowing it’s refined dinosaur carcasses isn’t very appetizing.”

“Dude, you just ate half a smoked pig carcass.”

He locked her gaze with his own, eyes as shockingly blue as ever. “You’re shitting me.”

“Nope. Oink oink.”

Springer dropped his fork. “Son of a bitch.”

They walked from the exit of the general store through the parking lot, packed snow squeaking under their feet, each carrying a couple bags of groceries. Verity flinched inwardly as Springer’s real self opened his own doors before they’d even gotten to him to ease getting everything packed away in the less-than-spacious backseat. Little things like that were going to be difficult to school him off of. At least getting him into the habit of wearing his seatbelt and making his avatar to appear to pay attention to driving had come easily enough, and he’d picked up proper American swearing with little effort. A larger matter needed immediate attention, though.

“We need to come up with a cover story.”

Springer nodded in agreement as he held the steering wheel loosely, allowing it to pull his hands as it moved accordingly. “I figured I’d go with the Iraq War vet angle. Special Ops chopper pilot. Not really allowed to say much about it.” He shot her a wink. “Wanted to check out Alaska because I’m really goddamn tired of the desert. Thinking about doing the bush pilot thing for a while.”

“Good start…”

He cocked his head to the side. “You don’t sound convinced.”

Verity frowned, attention focused on her mittens. “No, no, your side’s fine. It’s just that…” She looked at him once more, looked at the lines at the corners of his eyes, short hair that was dark brown save for the flecks of gray by his ears, marks that would put him in his late thirties or early forties. An age that was awkward either way; on the young side to pose as her father, on the old side to be a “friend” or anything non-platonic. “How do I fit into your story? I don’t think ‘orphan stowaway’ will work very well around here.”

“Oh, that’s easy.” Springer laughed. “You’re my former commander’s niece. He’s pretty sure I have PTSD, so he insisted you come along to keep an eye on me for a while in case I do something batshit-crazy.”

Verity couldn’t help but smile. “Uncle Magnus just wants the best for you.”

Hell, the rest of the story was pretty much true, too.

“Here we are.”

Springer turned off of the two-lane highway about three miles out of town onto a long driveway. They plunged back into the darkness, cut off from the late-breaking grayness of dawn by the lodgepole pines that blanketed the hillsides. The driveway curved gently along the topography for another quarter of a mile before ending at a small, two-story log cabin in a clearing, accompanied by a small shed and standing by the shore of a frozen lake.

Verity whistled as she stepped outside. “Nice digs. Who picked this out?”

“Jazz is the Earth expert. Kup hit him up for some recommendations.”

They headed inside and were greeted by a cozy yet open floor plan on the first floor. The doorway opened into a small kitchen on the right, living room with a couch facing a large pot-bellied stove in the middle, and a dining room at the back of the cabin with a large picture window facing the lake. Verity put the provisions away as Springer lit the stove and brought in more firewood from the covered porch. The stove proved effective as the chill of the cabin quickly melted away. Verity nodded at the kitchen window facing the driveway. “You gonna’ be okay out there? Wanna’ park in the shed or anything?”

“Nah, I’m fine. As long as I’m fueled up I can run my inductors and stay toasty. Alaska’s balmy compared to deep space.” Springer’s gaze shifted to the other window looking out over the lake. “How ‘bout you get some rest? You haven’t slept much since we left Debris.”

Verity yawned at the suggestion of sleep. “That’s the best idea since bacon.” She headed to the stairs but turned when she realized he wasn’t following. “What about you?”

“Hm?” His eyes lingered on the window for a moment more before turning to face her. “Oh. Go on ahead. I’m gonna’ go back outside and walk around for a bit.”

“You mean do a perimeter sweep.”

He shrugged, scratching at his collar. “Old habits die hard.”

Oh, my darling child.

What has become of you?

Springer stepped back out into the cold. He didn’t feel it as such, his projection merely sensing the temperature at -30 Celsius, the dead calm of morning not adding to any kind of windchill, his actual self still at a cozy 10 Celsius, not yet cooled all the way down from the drive. He turned to face his ground mode, attention divided, looking at himself from both perspectives. There hadn’t been enough time for an Earth remodel of his ground and air modes, not that he would’ve accepted it. The avatar was all the fakery he could endure for the time being. Now, his clearly Cybertronian design looked ridiculous parked at the edge of the pine forest and the oversight nagged at him. Verity’s suggestion about parking in the shed had been a good one; he’d noticed a few heads turning in his direction in town and had decided he was “testing new equipment for the military” if anyone asked. Truth be told, the thought of parking in the shed raised his mildly claustrophobic hackles; he justified parking outside in terms of having a better vantage point for any incoming hostiles. At least he’d had the foresight to remove the Autobot badge from his chest before leaving Debris, as much as it had pained him to do so. A tattoo of the Autobot emblem on his avatar’s left shoulder made up for it, at least a little.

His view of his avatar felt no less ridiculous. A few shades over two meters, just over 100 kilos of hard-light illusion, exhaling fake vapor into the cold, dry air with every fake breath, simulating a shiver in the cold he didn’t actually feel, all because that’s what the avatar designers observed humans doing so that’s what he would do to fit in. His general form was about what you’d expect him to be when distilled to human proportions. Tall, broad shoulders, muscular build. The facial features were vaguely his; deep-set eyes, strong jaw line, a nose that looked like it might’ve met a fist or two in the distant past. Only the eye color itself was truly familiar; the color of Earth’s sky on a sunny day at high altitude, the brilliant deep-blue of the Matrix, the color that led fools to believe that he was Matrix compatible.

Hoo, boy the joke was on them, wasn’t it?

Just wait until they find out he wasn’t forged or even constructed cold.

Wait until they find out where he really came from. Who really made him.

He turned his avatar to face back out to the lake.

He really needed that walk.

A pair of snowshoes leaning against the cabin wall caught his eye. He strapped them on and headed into the woods.

Oh, my darling child.

Why do you turn away from what you are?

How can you ignore your greatness?

Verity awakened slowly, the comfort of the bed doing nothing to relinquish its hold on her consciousness. She lay peacefully for several minutes, enjoying the space between sleeping and waking, enjoying the feeling of safety that allowed her these moments, unused to feeling this way on her home planet, of all places. She’d left the bedroom door open to allow the heat from the stove downstairs to drift up and in, and could hear Springer move about as the floorboards creaked under his weight. There would be no sneaking around this place, which was just as well. She liked the idea of being able to hear anything that might approach.

She listened as Springer continued to clink around the kitchen, mutter a quiet “oops” as he dropped something on the floor, then a deep sigh as he finally settled onto the couch in the living room. She had to admit that the idea of the avatar still spooked her, knowing full well that the real deal was parked outside and driving the thing. Being so used to dealing with Springer on his own terms, in his own form, his adaptation to being on her terms was completely foreign. She sensed his unease with it, had noticed him frowning at his hands, itching at the collar of his jacket, looking at the sky with longing. She guessed he would get used to it as had the other Autobots, but she wondered how it would play with the obvious PTSD he dealt with during the last mission and at intermittent moments since.

She hauled herself out of bed and headed down the stairs.

At first, Springer seemed to simply be lost in thought, gazing at nothing in particular. It wasn’t until she sat on the other end of the couch that she noticed his eyes regularly flicking back and forth.

“Are you okay?”

“Hm?” He turned to face her, eyes thankfully absent of flicking. “Yeah, why?”

“Your eyes were…” she mimicked the motion with her own.

“Oh, wow… yeah, I didn’t realize it looked like that. I was just reading.”

“Like, off of a HUD?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there a less-creepy way of doing that?”

“Um… sure.” A tablet materialized in his hand and he held it up. “This better?”

“Much. Thank you. Getting caught up on things?” She shifted closer to take a look, only to realize it was written in Cybertronian glyphs.

His attention shifted to the tablet. “Yeah. Figured I’d start with the easy stuff and read the Lost Light logs. Rod’s running a soap opera out there.”

“I’ll admit I’ve been out of touch.”

“You and me both. Did you know Ultra Magnus is a load bearer?”

She shook her head. “What’s that?”

“A very small, but very strong ‘bot. Like, point-one-percenter-strong.  The original Magnus was killed a while ago. After that, Tyrest recruited load bearers to… god… wear his armor as a shell. When one died, Tyrest swapped out a new one. Minimus Ambus is the most recent of…” Springer checked the tablet to make sure he had it right. “Five. Five load bearers to wear the armor since the original Magnus.”

“I take it you had no idea.”

Springer shook his head. “Ratchet was the only one to figure it out until his cover was blown a couple years ago. I started under the original, according to the timeline. You’ve only known Minimus, though.” He died five times. Five times and I never noticed…

Distracted, he didn’t notice as Verity reached over towards him, something in his hair catching her eye. “You have a…”

He flinched.

A whole-body, almost-falling-off-the-couch flinch.

She drew back, pointing at her own brow instead. “Pine needles…”

Still wide-eyed, he ran a hand through his hair and pulled out a pair of needles, still joined at one end. “Oh. Yeah. From the woods.” He placed them on the coffee table.

Belatedly, Verity noticed the thin scar running below the right side of his jaw, up behind his ear, and ending at the corner of his eye. A souvenir of his encounter with Overlord from five years ago, repaired beyond recognition in his true form, but rendered raw in a holomatter avatar designed to reflect his inner self. She decided to address the new turn of events head-on. “So, rule number one: no reaching for the retired soldier’s face so soon after it’s been ripped off. Got it.”

Springer ran a hand along his jaw. “Yeah, sounds like a good plan.”

“Anything else I should know about?”

“Don’t try to kill me in my sleep.”

“An oddly specific but reasonable request. Anything else?”

“Don’t shoot me in the back.”

“Check.”

Springer seemed to consider for another moment, then shrugged. “That’s all I can think of for now. Anything I should be aware of for you?”

Verity paused, off-guard. Oh, what a list that would be. Instead, she smiled. “I don’t know if spiders live this far north, but if they do, and if we find any in here, you should probably be the one to deal with them.”

He returned the smile. “Lucky for you I’m good with bladed weapons.”

“Good deal.” That settled, she picked up her own tablet from the table and he returned his attention to his. She pretended to read for several minutes, sorting out her thoughts, gathering her wits for the next hurdle. Finally, she placed her tablet back on the table. “I do have one request.”

“Okay.”

She took a deep breath, lowering her gaze. “This is going to sound weird, and it totally is, and you can say no. It’s just that… I’ve been mostly on my own for the last five years and I haven’t had much contact with other people, including other humans. Even though you’re not really human, and you might not even be okay with it… can I just…”

She brought her gaze back up to Springer’s.

He looked mildly terrified.

“Can I just sit close to you?”

The tension fell from his body. “Is that all? Yeah, sure.”

She moved over cautiously, and she stopped as he lifted his arm to put it around her. “Actually, I don’t want your arm around me. I just want to… lean against you. You can just keep doing what you were doing.”

He held her gaze for another moment before replying. “Okay.”

He picked up his tablet again and she curled against him, the closest thing she’d had to human contact in over five years. Placing her head on his shoulder, she was surprised at the natural feel of the sweater he was “wearing,” his projection of wool remarkably close to the real thing. His shoulder had the slight give characteristic of large but relaxed muscle. He was warm despite the fact that he’d been outside a short time ago, and she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d set himself to radiate at normal human body temperature. To top it all off, she heard the subtle but steady thump of a heart beating in his chest. She came dangerously close to saying something about how real he seemed but bit it back just in time. Instead, she just settled in and asked, “Is this too weird for you?”

She felt the sharp but non-uncomfortable shift of a laugh. “Three days ago, my mind was turned inside out as I stumbled through the weaponized-psychedelic machinations of a mad scientist who I then discovered was my creator shortly after leaving him for dead in said machinations. Five minutes ago, I discovered that one of my closest superiors was actually six different people, each one replacing the last as he was killed. This is not too weird for me.”

She closed her eyes and relaxed. “Perspective is everything.”

Oh, my darling child.

I am with you! We are together at last!

Springer lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling in the darkness of his room.

I’m not afraid to go to sleep.

I am not afraid to go to sleep.

Maybe he was a little afraid to go to sleep.

Maybe he hadn’t really shut down at all since waking up a week ago.

Going for a week or two without shutting down for recharge during missions was a reasonably common practice. It took its toll, but so long as one eventually got caught up, it wasn’t overly harmful.

But not doing a daily recharge cycle during downtime was generally recognized as a problem, and the whole point of this getaway was to enforce some downtime and jettison the problems.

Part of the issue was the noise. For five years, on one level of consciousness or another, he’d listened to the background hum of Debris’ ambient noise, not really noticing it until he’d recognized its absence upon collapsing into bed an hour ago. Now, instead of the steady, predictable machinations of a space station, he heard the pops of the wood in the stove downstairs as the fire died, the creaks of the logs of the cabin as it cooled in the night, the sighing of the breeze outside of his window, the bouncing flop of Verity turning over in the room across the hall, the rolling crack of the ice settling on the lake, all happening at random intervals, all happening at different average frequencies, each one coming as more of a surprise than the last.

How the hell did people live like this?

By understanding that none of it is a threat, you slag-for-brains moron, he told himself. His perimeter check earlier that day had confirmed what he’d already known: the bears were still in hibernation, the wolves were in low enough numbers to handle reasonably easily, and the humans had respected the no trespassing signage posted along the property’s boundary. Any other critters could be dealt with using minimal force. His infrared further confirmed that he and Verity were in possession of the only warm bodies weighing more than twenty kilos within a half-mile radius, a reading he could monitor while asleep and set to wake him the moment it changed.

Having satisfied himself that they were not in any imminent danger, he closed his eyes.

And opened them ten seconds later.

What if it’s another five years before I wake up again?

Ah. Yeah. That.

He ran through his diagnostics for the tenth time that day, getting the same results for the tenth time, knowing it didn’t matter.

If Prowl wants me out of it, Prowl will find a way to make it happen.

Even that wasn’t the real issue.

If I’m stuck with the replay of Overlord ripping my face off over and over again for another five years, I’m putting my blaster to my head the moment I wake up.

Ok. Yeah, that was the truly unbearable possibility here.

But it wasn’t even that easy.

In order to live decommissioned on a planet less technically advanced than Cybertron, he’d had to surrender both his air-mode and hand-held blasters as well as his saber, in exchange for a collapsible, if not transformable, rotor blade.  He was disarmed against all others, as well as himself.

The well-sharpened knives in the kitchen had not escaped his notice, however.

And he knew damn well that Verity would call in the troops if he didn’t wake up tomorrow, and Kup would be here within a day to shout him back awake.

Ok.

One night at a time, then.

He set an internal alarm.

He forced himself to shut down.

He dreamt.

He dreamt of Alaskan mountains.

Chapter Text

Who do you battle in your dreams?
Who strokes your feathers 'til you scream?
And when I'm tired of feeling black
Spread the wings upon your back
Take us high above it all
And stroke your feathers 'til we fall
Until we fall, until we fall back down again

Chris Cornell, Audioslave, Until We Fall

Springer was up early the next day, long before what passed for dawn in the Alaskan January. He sat at the dining room table, a slab of pine almost as thick as the width of his hand and longer than he was tall, facing the window. He had several maps of the area spread out before him, contemplating going out for a spin later in the day to get the lay of the land. If he had to suffer the indignity of filing a flight plan with the local air traffic control like any other civilian pilot, he figured he’d better be prepared for it.

The plate of bacon he’d made before sitting down helped.

His com beeped, and he materialized the tablet to answer it. Ultra Magnus appeared on the screen.

Was he… smiling?

“Springer. Kup told me you were up and around. It’s good to have you back.”

“Thanks. I assume you’ve read the last mission report, just so we’re clear on what you mean by ‘back.’”

“I have. I appreciate that you actually followed most of the protocol for decommissioning. As much as I regret your absence from the ranks, I understand your reasons. Please know that you are welcome back at any time.”

“Thanks.” Springer gave a non-committal shrug. “Verity’s still asleep, but I can wake her up if you want to talk to her.”

“That won’t be necessary. I spoke with her on her own device last evening. Cellular network signal is minimal at your location and you were asleep, so I took the liberty of routing through your satellite com. I hope you don’t mind.”

Springer shook his head. “Nah, I gave her permissions on my com gear already. She’s thrilled about my unlimited data plan.”

“I imagine she is. Though I will warn you to be particularly cautious when dealing with her as a human avatar. Her judgment can be reckless.”

“Yeah, we’ve discussed that a little bit.” Springer recalled their brief conversation skirting her reasons for blackmailing Prowl just before Carnivac brought them both plummeting out of the sky. He could hardly believe that had been less than a week ago. “I think she’ll be less prone to doing something stupid as long as she feels safe.”

“I have no doubts regarding your ability to protect her.” Translation: you’ll answer to me if you fail.

Springer paused for a moment, lifting his gaze to the view of the frozen lake behind the cabin. “Magnus, I…”

“You are no more of a fake than I am.”

Springer’s jaw hung open, unable to respond.

“I was told that you have updated yourself on the Lost Light logs and are now aware of my true status as a load bearer.”

“I… yes.” Dammit, Verity.

“What you were born with matters little. How you wear what you are given does. You wore it well, Springer. I know you will continue to wear it well.”

We’re both posers. Takes one to know one. He shook his head, trying to throw off the errant thought and find an appropriate response. Failing, he offered the only thing he could. “Thanks.”

Magnus gave a curt nod. “Good luck with everything. Be sure to provide Verity with vegetables on a regular basis. Magnus out.”

Springer waggled his fingers in a wave goodbye as the image flickered out.

Shit just wasn’t going to stop getting weird.

Oh, my darling child!

You are the most real being to exist in the universe!

Dawn finally broke. Being Alaska in late January, it wasn’t so much “dawn” as it was the “sky turning a lighter shade of gray” around 10:30. Verity came down the stairs, still in her flannel PJs, and headed for the kitchen.

“Eat light,” Springer called from the living room.

“Hm?” Verity reached for a mug, still half-asleep.

“We’re flying this morning. No puking allowed.”

Verity’s eyes finally opened all the way and she hastily made a cup of tea.

Sunlight flooded the cockpit and Verity breathed a contented sigh as she watched the mountains and pine forests slip by below them. The steady buzz of Springer’s rotors was mostly dampened by her helmet and his own insulation, but she could still feel the vibration through his frame. She let the familiarity of it soak through her.

This was the real him. The way he was supposed to be.

The mountains. God, the mountains. They rose jaggedly out of the earth, looking sharp enough to slice your finger open if you were to reach out and touch one. Snowfall had been light for the last few weeks and temperatures had been bitter cold, allowing Springer to get close without risk of setting off an avalanche with the racket from his rotors. The resulting view was a depth-perception cavalcade as the closer peaks slid by faster than the mid-range ones, the distant peaks remaining nearly motionless by comparison, the snow nearly blinding in the mid-afternoon sun.

Springer handled the turbulence as well as could be expected. High winds through the mountains being what they were, Verity was nonetheless glad she’d boarded with an empty stomach. They flew a big loop, crisscrossed it a few times, then returned to the cabin three hours after they had left it.

“Time to hop out, kiddo.” Springer’s voice came in over her helmet com. With no room for his avatar in the cockpit of his flight mode, they had returned to business-as-usual methods of interaction. “I need to practice a few things and you wouldn’t like the ride.”

“Ah, c’mon, I can handle it!”

“No, you can’t.”

“Grrrrrugh. I thought we were past the ‘delicate human’ crap. Let me show you what I can take.”

A short pause ensued. Finally, he responded. “Fine. Tighten your harness.”

“Ha hah! Yes!”

He headed out over the lake, the perfect flat, obstacle-free space for this particular exercise. He started out easily enough, pulling roller-coaster climbs, banked turns, and corkscrew dives, all of which were received with howls of joy and laughter from his passenger. He went into a horizontal slide with a hard yaw, spinning about the axis of his main rotor, stirring Verity forward-right-backward-left until her enthusiasm began to wane. He then turned forward into the slide and climbed up. Up, and up, until he hit 25,000 feet, about the highest he dared to push his engines with a human on board, even if she was breathing canned oxygen.

Then he dove. And banked.

Springer flattened into a corkscrew pattern, shedding altitude only at a rate that would increase his speed with as few negative Gs as possible, turning his cabin into a centrifuge, and his test of Verity’s tolerance for vertical G-forces began.

Two Gs. Three. Four. Verity’s eyes appeared to lose focus.

“Tighten up your muscles and breathe. It’ll help.”

Five Gs. “Springer, I can’t see…”

“Tighten your legs and drop your shoulders.”

Six Gs.

“Spr… Sp.. Suh…” Verity’s head tipped back as she passed out.

He banked out of the turn and eased back, and Verity regained consciousness almost immediately. Another few moments passed as she blinked away the confusion. “You did that on purpose.”

“Maybe.”

“You asshole!” She struck the top of his instrument panel with a fist.

“You asked for it.”

“Maybe.” She settled back as he approached the cabin.

“For what it’s worth, you didn’t pass out until six and half Gs. Most humans top out at five.”

“How high do fighter pilots get?”

“About nine or so, but that’s with a special suit and training. You did well.”

She sighed as he landed at the edge of the lake and his avatar flickered back into existence outside, noticing that he wasn’t powering down. “But now it’s time for me to get out so you can do your tough-guy routine.”

“Yep. I’ll leave the avatar around to stay with you but I’ll need to focus on flying, so keep the chatter to a minimum.”

“Sure thing.” She popped the door open and was greeted by the cold, noise, and rotor-wash, and dialed the thermostat on her armor up a little. He took off again, banking off back over the lake. The sun was low in the sky but brilliant now that the clouds had moved off, glinting off of his canopy.

His avatar looked on, anticipation etched in the firm set of his jaw and hint of a smile. He cast a quick glance in her direction and threw a wink, then focused again on the departing helicopter. She knew him well enough to know what that wink meant. What happened next was going to look insane, but everything was under control.

Standard Wrecker Procedure, then.

The helicopter hovered low over the lake for a minute or so, blowing the snow off of the ice, etching his in ground effect vortices in sparkling crystalline flashes of airflow and dancing frost. Then he rose directly upward, stopping at a hundred and fifty feet above the ice to hover again.

His avatar took a deep breath. “I know this doesn’t look like much, but it’s actually kinda dangerous.” He held out a hand to forestall any interruption she might offer. “Once I go past my own rotor diameter above the ground, I set up a downwash if I hover in the same spot. If I stay there more than a few seconds, I’ll sink into it.” Indeed, the helicopter descended several feet before pushing forward and stabilizing altitude. He practiced this a few more times, escaping left, escaping right, escaping aft. Several more maneuvers followed. Quick stops, running takeoffs, steep approaches, all of which seemed uninspiring to Verity, even if she understood the necessity of practicing them.

“Alright, fine.” As if sensing her impatience, Springer pushed himself up through a hard climb until he gained about two thousand feet, banked, and then dove.

Straight at them.

Verity’s scream was a mix of fear and delight, knowing, mostly, that he had it under control. Sure enough, he pulled out of the dive just over their heads, the rotorwash threatening to throw her to the ground. He climbed again, barrel-rolling on the way up, pulling a back flip at the apex of the climb. Completing the flip, he climbed again, higher and higher, until she could barely make out his shape against the sky.

A moment later, the sound of his rotors vanished.

He had transformed.

She turned again to the avatar but his eyes were closed, hand once again raised against any interruption, the expression on his face one of deep concentration and enjoyment.

She looked back up to watch him, arms and legs spread out in stable free-fall. At the last possible moment, he rotated his forearms and shins, using the airfoils on their surfaces to translate some of his descent to forward groundspeed before transforming and pulling out of the fall, once against roaring past them, turbines screaming against the strain. His avatar let out a whoop of jubilation, throwing his arms up into the wind. The helicopter banked again, then made a final, blissfully normal, approach back to the cabin, hovering for a brief moment, then settling down to land and powering down. “Ah, man, I needed that!”

“Ok, that was impressive,” Verity conceded as they walked back. “Did that go well for you? Everything check out?”

“Yeah,” he said, still smiling broadly. “That’s the first time I’ve flown for fun in…” He sobered when he did the math, recalling the reasons for the hiatus in the first place. He dismissed it with a shake. “First time in way too long. Perfect day for it.”

“Really? With it being so cold?”

“Cold air is better. Denser. More for the rotors to bite into, more power for the engines. Conditions were forgiving today once the air over the lake calmed down.”

They reached the door of the cabin and watched as he transformed to his less-conspicuous ground mode before heading in. She stacked her armor by the door as he headed to the stove and added a few pieces of wood.

“Springer?”

“Hm?”

“Will you teach me how to fly?”

He stood up and regarded her for a moment, running a hand back through his hair, clearly hesitant to answer.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I just… I’m not sure I’d be a good teacher. Flying is something I just do, like walking. I have to practice the hard stuff and the delicate stuff, but that’s still mostly instinct. Airfoils are part of my anatomy. I’m not sure I could… instruct… someone who wasn’t built for it.”

She looked down at the helmet in her hands, doing her best to hide her disappointment. “I understand.”

Her reaction stung harder than he expected, and he considered further. Maybe it would be a good challenge for both of them. Maybe it would come in handy down the road. “But… I’ll think about it.”

She brought her eyes up to meet his. “Really?”

“If you don’t mind having a shitty teacher, we might be able to work something out. I’ll download some instruction manuals and see how you people manage to teach each other how to fly without killing yourselves.”

She couldn’t help but to smile.

Chapter Text

Soaks my skin through to the bone
Pain is nothing that a downpour won’t erase

Delerium, Flowers Become Screens

He slept.

He dreamed.

He dreamed the horrifyingly lucid dreams of those who have visited the brink of death and returned, of those who have witnessed the dismemberment of too many soldiers, who have experienced their own dismemberment too many times, who have knowingly brought it all upon themselves out of a slurry of pride and patriotism and cynicism and suicidal ideation, who believed that if they couldn’t personally rid the world of evil, they didn’t want to live in it anyway, and who therefore tended to come face-to-face with the very evil they desired to cleanse the world of.

He dreamed of Overlord.

Hopelessly outmatched. But that was always the point anyway, wasn’t it? Because no one else would. Because if you threw enough stones at a wall, it’ll eventually come down. He was just another one of the stones, and he would throw himself against that wall as many times as it took, and it didn’t matter if he got vaporized in the process. It didn’t matter that it hurt. It didn’t matter that it wore him down bits and pieces at a time.

Just fucking make the evil stop.

And he had.

Against all odds, he’d done it. Aided by Ironfist’s incredible wit and Verity’s manipulation, he’d done it. They’d brought Overlord down. At a steep cost, but the best things were always hard-earned. He could’ve died happily, his final sensory inputs of hearing thousands of detonations, hearing Verity undermine Overlord’s dreams, hearing Impactor doom him to imprisonment, a fitting seal to Springer’s own death.

But it had all come undone.

He hadn’t died. Overlord hadn’t stayed down. The smoldering embers had flickered back to life. Springer was on his back next to the charred remains, unable to move, unable to respond when the breeze picked up and lifted a spark from the pile, dropping it onto his own armor and breathing it to life. It burned a hole through his midsection, never did get a set of those damned circuit dampeners, and the rising smoke formed the shape of the very madness he had striven so hard to stomp out.

The smoke continued to build, the spark continued to burn, and all he could do was lie there and moan.

The smoke-Overlord hung over him, became more solid, and smiled. “You failed, Springer. I’m back and they all died for no reason and you failed. You weren’t strong enough to stick around and make sure I stayed down.” The smoke body sprouted arms and hands and they descended to his throat, fingers closing around, hands tightening to restrict the ventilation and energon conduits, choking Springer to death. “More will die because of your incompetence. You should blame yourself for every single one of them.” One hand left Springer’s throat, ripped his chest armor off, then brought it to his mouth so he could eat it. “Your remorse is so very delicious.” He ripped the armor off of Springer’s right shoulder, devouring that as well. Paralyzed, Springer could barely struggle against him. “I will kill as many of your friends in front of you as possible. I will pull them apart, one limb at a time, and I will make them beg for their lives because you are too pathetic to beg for your own.”

The sound of running footsteps reached Springer’s audios, and his spark sank even further. “No... don’t...” But it was too late. Verity had already arrived, running in a neat arc just beyond Overlord’s grasp before opening fire. Inevitably, she was too slow to avoid the smoke-arm as it reached out and the giant smoke-hand grabbed her, lifting her off of the ground. She struggled against his grip as he held her above his mouth, dangling, then dropped her in.

He turned to face Springer as he smiled at the crunching sounds of his own chewing. “So very tasty. Isn’t that what you thought as well?”

“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘What?’ Are you telling me you never availed yourself of your little friend? You idiot. Here, let me give you a second chance.”

Overlord reached into his smoke-mouth with his smoke-hand and pulled Verity’s destroyed body out from his gullet, her smashed head held between his thumb and forefinger. Springer watched, horrified, as her right hand twitched with a life that wished to flee its tortured existence. Her bloodied eyes stared blankly out from behind the shattered visor as she brought her hand up to the open wound in her chest and then removed her own heart, offering it up to whoever or whatever might be around to take it before her body fell limp, dead.

Finally, Springer screamed.

Verity was awake and out of bed instantly. She dodged through her door and into Springer’s room, flicking the light switch on. He was still in bed, on his side, turned away from her. He screamed again, lifting his left arm, pawing fruitlessly at the air in front of him, the Autobot insignia tattooed on his shoulder staring up at the ceiling.

She knew what that arm could do and had no desire to get near it while it wasn’t under control. Casting her gaze around the room, she saw a foam football sitting on the dresser by the door, no doubt left behind from a previous renter, and she picked it up. She took careful aim, then threw it at Springer as he let out a third strangled scream.

The football hit him square in the shoulder and the scream cut short into a startled yelp. He sat up and turned to face her, his expression blank for a few moments until he was able to sort it all out. “Sonofabitch.”

“Nightmare?”

He ran his right hand up the side of his jaw, then back through his hair. “Yeah.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Verity crossed her arms over her chest. “Then I’m invoking the Ultra Magnus Rule of Nightmares.”

“What’s that?”

“If you refuse to talk about it, then you waive the right to scream about it. Even in your sleep.”

Springer smiled. “I don’t remember that being part of the Tyrest Accord or the Autobot Code.”

“You’ve not heard of the Handbook of Barracks, Shipmates, and Other Close-Quarters Cohabitation Arrangements? I’ll loan you my copy.”

“I’ll pass.” He flopped back down. “Sorry I woke you up. You gonna’ be able to get back to sleep?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. G’night.”

She flipped the light switch back off and headed back to bed, relishing the warmth as she dove under the down comforter. She was indeed sleepy enough to drift back off, but one thing did keep her on the edge of wakefulness for a few minutes.

The image of an entry wound scar in the middle of Springer’s back, just to the left of his spine. A matching exit wound scar just to the left of the end of his sternum.

More souvenirs, this pair a result of Impactor’s madness from twenty-five years ago, shooting his second-in-command and protégé in the back and through his midsection, mindless of the pleading protests, all manner of ends-justifying-the-means.

Coupled with the nearly incoherent muttering she had heard the night before and earlier this evening, she strongly suspected that this was not the end of Springer’s sleeping troubles.

The knife slid effortlessly through the white orb, concentric rings separating as they fell stiffly to the side.

His hands were steady, determined, even as the tears streamed down his face.

He’s dead because of me.

The knife handled well, evenly balanced, mercilessly sharp, ruthlessly responsive as it sank through another slice.

It would do whatever he needed it to do.

They’re all dead because of me.

A single tear fell from the edge of his jaw and landed on the knuckle of his right thumb even as it held the object of his flensing.

“You ok?”

Springer looked up from his work as Verity shuffled through the kitchen.

“This fucking onion is murder on the eyes. No wonder you people don’t like vegetables.”

“One, not all vegetables are like that. Two, don’t rub your eyes with your hands once you’ve started handling them.”

He looked down at his hands. “That would’ve been good to know five minutes ago.”

“What are you making?”

“Omelets. I read that they go well with bacon so thought I’d give ‘em a shot.”

“You do know that eggs are chicken fetuses, right?”

Springer returned Verity’s smirk, refusing to be goaded. “Yes, I do. I spent all morning reading up on what humans eat and the fancy names you give to things that aren’t actually all that fancy. Escargot is snails, pâté is goose liver, caviar is fish eggs…”

“Ok, ok, you’ve done your homework and figured out the gross stuff.”

“You are squishy, slimy animals that eat other squishy, slimy animals. It’s all gross stuff. You just evolved so that it’s all palatable enough to eat, and this avatar’s been designed to mimic that, so here we are. A Cybertronian cooking dead chicken fetuses and smoked, thinly sliced, dead pig flesh for a human to get the day started.”

Verity gave her best “fair enough” shrug and went for the cabinet to make some tea. “What’s your plan for today?”

Springer’s eyes flicked to the window as a gust of wind battered the cabin, the eaves of the roof whistling against the strain. “Weather’s no good for flying today. Thought I might walk around and see how those snowshoes do in the new drifts. You?”

Verity watched the snow blow sideways though the window as she drew water for her tea. “I’m thinking it’s a good day for me to stay in and do some reading. Maybe start on those piloting manuals you downloaded for me.”

Guzzle was right. His friends are dead for no reason. He just pointed his gun at the wrong person. He just held the wrong person responsible. It’s my fault they’re dead. It’s my fault he’s dead. Impactor pulled the trigger, but I put Guzzle between the crosshairs.

Impactor. Guzzle was the last Wrecker he fired on, but I was the first. I was the one who got him started. I was the one who got him fired up and out for blood and then got myself stuck between him and his target. My words put him in G9. If anyone could’ve argued for a lighter sentence, it was me, but I didn’t. If I’d have just stopped him from murdering Squadron X in the first place it all could have been avoided, but I was too weak. I couldn’t even open the door in time. That’s all it would’ve taken… just open the goddamn door. But I didn’t and he rotted in prison for twenty years.

And Kup rotted in the Dead Universe for how long? Fourteen billion years? Seriously? And I just fucking slept through that?

Roadbuster. God, Roadbuster. Always did what I asked of him. Never questioned me. Just did it. Sat by my side for five years. And how did I repay him? I let him sacrifice himself. I should’ve known what he was going to do. Should’ve ordered him to stop. But I just sat there like an idiot and let him drive off through the window into oblivion.

Springer trudged through the snow, head down, letting the sleet and wind and ice pound him as he walked along the shore of the lake. Letting his own thoughts pound him from the inside of his own mind.

How did I get a pass? How did I get to leave? How am I the one who gets to find any peace? I’m no more deserving than the rest of them. I’m the one who made them all suffer.

He had let the avatar’s temperature drop to match his surroundings. Now, finally, he did feel the cold. Wind-driven ice stung at his face and he did nothing to stop it. His hair had grown wet and then frozen solid. He did not shiver. Shivering was the response of actual warm-blooded animals to activate muscles and generate heat. He was not a warm-blooded animal. He was barely a Cybertronian, could only be called such because he was built on the planet, neither forged nor cold-constructed like any regular denizen.

A fake.

Leaving a trail of death and suffering in his wake.

He stopped in his tracks, suddenly realizing that the tips of his snowshoes hung over a gulf of nothingness.

He looked up to see that he had wandered away from the lake and to the edge of a cliff at the top of a narrow, steep gorge.

The snowpack groaned under his weight.

He had the sneaking suspicion that he was standing on a cornice of snow out above the gorge, overhanging the rock several feet behind him. He had additional suspicions about his weight being too much for the cornice to either maintain his current position or withstand a retreat from it.

He couldn’t fly. He couldn’t even hover.

He could dematerialize and simply rematerialize back on firm ground.

But he didn’t have to.

He could fall.

He could hit the bottom.

He knew exactly where he was, could ping his position from his GPS. He knew exactly how deep the gorge was from his study/download of the topographical maps a few days ago. He knew it would be enough to make a huge mess of the avatar.

And destroy himself along with it?

Rectify the issue of the injustice of his continued existence right here and now?

Another groan issued from the snowpack below him. He did not move. He did not dematerialize. He remained still as he closed his eyes and focused on the feel of the snow buckling from under his feet as the groan became a whine of snapping ice until it finally gave out.

Springer fell.

And was yanked backwards.

His hands and feet flew forward as his shoulders were snapped back. He had just enough time to understand that he was no longer falling when the back of his head connected with the trunk of a tree and he blacked out.

Wake up.

Wake up!

Wake up!

“WAKE UP!”

Verity’s voice in his head, laced with panic. He swam toward it, swam against the tide of oblivion, against the desire to slide down into annihilation.

“WAKE UP!!!”

“Stop yelling.” Springer brought a hand over his eyes, slowly squinting open against the glare of blowing snow. He was lying in a snowdrift at the base of a tree, the pine boughs waving in the gusts above him. Without turning his head, he looked to the side to see Verity crouched in the snow next to him, safe and snug in her protective armor.

“Are you ok?” she asked.

“Give me a second.” He ran through his diagnostics, finding only minor damage to the back of his head, neck, and shoulders. His self-repair would remedy it in a few hours, but he would be sore for the duration. “I’ll be fine.”

“What happened?”

He sat up, fully remembering falling from the ledge, fully remembering not giving a shit, fully remembering getting yanked back by… something. Which made no sense. None of it made a goddamn bit of sense.

“Springer?”

“I don’t know. How did you find me?”

Guilt flashed briefly over her features. “Kup had an app installed on my tablet and suit. It tells me if you’re in trouble and pings your location so I can track you down.”

Springer frowned. “An SOS beacon. What else did you all patch into me without my consent?”

Verity remained silent.

“Never mind,” Springer said, getting to his feet with the aid of the tree that had robbed him of consciousness in the not too distant past. “I’ll take it up with First Aid later.”

“It came from a good place,” she said, getting to her feet as well. “And it turned out to be necessary, so…”

“I understand that.” He turned back toward the cabin and started walking, deliberately not looking at the edge of the cliff, not wishing to lead Verity’s gaze to the disturbed edge if she hadn’t seen it already. “I just don’t understand why I wasn’t told and why it’s not showing up in my directories.”

“Most of us thought you would resist it.” She fell into step beside him, her armor having been modified to extend snowshoes of its own when needed.

He had nothing to reply with, but refused to concede that the parties involved with the decision had probably been correct.

Oh, my darling child!

What have I done to you?

Chapter Text

If you can believe you’re turning on a world that broke your mind
Then I can do something for you even though you’re lost in time
You won’t have to be my heaven, I won’t have to be your friend

Delerium, Daylight

Tarantulas perched lightly on Springer’s chest in the dark in his spider form, his mass and volume reined in to about those of a baseball. Still, that beat the near-microscopic dimensions he had taken for the last several days, riding at the nape of Springer’s neck, warm, safe, and undetected while embedded into the skin of the avatar. Now that Springer was asleep, he took the opportunity to come out and gaze upon his child.

He reached a leg out to trace the air above the scar along Springer’s jaw, spark aching at the damage it symbolized. He had poached Springer’s com signal to get himself up to speed on the life his child had lived since they had parted ways, so long ago. His mild disappointment that his creation had not taken up science or engineering was more than outweighed by his pride in Springer’s other accomplishments. Springer was no genius, but his battle tactics demonstrated a creative simplicity, his preparation for assignments was meticulous, his ability to inspire his troops was legendary, his performance in battle was brutal, and his reputation was nothing short of heroic. He had made his mark in the world, and it saddened Tarantulas to watch him withdraw from it.

What hurt more was the knowledge that much of the blame for that withdrawal lay at Tarantulas’s own feet. Springer’s nature, his hard-coded design specification, was to soak everything up, take everything in, absorb his surroundings as much as possible. He fit entirely too perfectly with Tarantulas’s other primary creations, Aequitas and Impetus. Springer had fully engaged the influence of his brethren creations which in turn forced him to endure the extraction of guilt with a power unlike that experienced by any other ‘bot. Aequitas had yanked from him one of the most damning testimonies of its history despite the fact that he was testifying against his own leader and hero. Impetus had mined his psyche so deeply that he blamed himself for the misdeeds of that same hero, the very misdeeds that had landed him at Aequitas to begin with. Given the incident at the cliff earlier that day, it seemed obvious that the two experiences had driven Springer to the point of no return. The ultimate withdrawal.

Tarantulas would not let that happen.

He had lost his son once. Lost Ostaros to his own carelessness and short-sightedness, unaware of the depth of Prowl’s crisis of conscience. He would not lose his son again, and he’d be damned if he lost Springer to his own mind-bending machinations.

He had brought Ostaros into this world. He would not let Springer take himself out of it.

But Tarantulas knew from their first encounter that his child would fight him until his dying breath. Over the last few days, he’d learned that Springer would no doubt welcome the end of his own life, particularly if it meant taking his creator with him, to wipe the universe clean of Tarantulas’s existence as penance for his sins, regardless of whether or not they were actually his own.

Tarantulas would have to force the issue.

With a final look at Springer’s face, the third face he had seen his son wear, he turned and crept to the edge of the bed and down to the floor. He had also taken note of the creaking boards, and was sure to maintain a silent escape through the open door, down the hall, and down the stairs. Slipping through the door to the outside was nothing more than shrinking down beyond the largest gap in the jamb. Once outside, he bumped up about to vehicle size in order to make it through three feet of powder on the ground and blowing snow and ice, confident that his chimera armor would shield him enough to avoid triggering Springer’s sentry protocols. Reaching the left front wheel, he shrunk back down, mouse-sized, and slung his way up into Springer’s engine.

Very little was left of the original Ostaros as Tarantulas climbed about. The surroundings were completely unfamiliar, bore no resemblance to his own handiwork, had exchanged all the innocence of the protoform for the fortress-like build of a warrior, and it took some doing to find Springer’s breaker panel, locked securely behind an armor plate. He probably could’ve cracked it open and thrown the breakers before Springer could properly respond, but that was not the re-introduction he wanted.

He traveled in further, deeper into the machine his son had become, marveling at the raw power Springer had at his disposal, noting how well he had been rebuilt from the mission at G-9, noting the care he had been given after the detonation of the Tor.

Despite what Tarantulas generally thought of the Autobots, they had treated his child well.

Finally, he reached something familiar, something created with his own hands, the first, only, and perhaps last of its kind.

Springer’s spark.

Springer’s hand-built spark.

The sight of it finally warmed his own. It still beat with the same frequency, still radiated with the same spectrum, still gave him that sense of wonder of life created from not-life, Matrix energy copied so flawlessly that it remained effortlessly cohesive.

Its one and only fault, a fault that Prowl had used so ruthlessly against its owner, was that it was so easy to put into a dormant state. To be sure, it was just as easily revived, if one happened to know how to do it or stumble upon the solution.

Tarantulas would do both tonight. His son would no doubt view it as an invasion, but if this was what it took to save his life, so be it.

He reached out to the spark of his child, let its familiarity give him the strength for what he had to do next. Generating a brief, powerful field around the spark, he isolated it from its body for just a moment.

Just long enough to induce a zero-point and send Springer back to a comatose state.

Again, the red sky.

Again, the gray hand, swooping down upon him.

Again, the fingers raked through his face and destroyed his mind.

Again, he was unable to escape.

Springer woke from one nightmare only to enter another, understanding immediately that something had gone horribly wrong.

Still in his human avatar form, he found himself in one of the over-stuffed chairs downstairs in the living room, gagged, hands tied behind his back, ankles bound together, strapped to the chair itself with a rope looped several times around his chest, wearing only the shorts he had collapsed into bed with. A quick test of the bindings confirmed that although they were not overly tight or uncomfortable, they were beyond the strength he could currently summon to break. The avatar itself appeared locked as well, unable to phase it out or even phase in additional clothes. He was also unable to access his true form, locked entirely into the avatar. He was well and truly stuck.

“Please do not struggle,” said a voice from behind him.

A voice that he recognized instantly.

“I do not wish to harm you,” said the owner of the voice as he stepped into Springer’s field of view in robot form, slightly larger than human-sized to fit comfortably in the room, still somewhat damaged from their previous encounter. “Struggling will only drain you, and we have so much to discuss.”

Despite himself, Springer screamed.

Tarantulas watched as his son’s pupils dilated and darted around the room looking for something, anything, that could be used as a weapon.

“Do not waste your time. There is no escaping your present situation.”

Springer lunged forward, held in check by his bindings, teeth biting into his gag. “Uck oo!” he screamed around it.

“Now, now, no need for profanity either.”

“Er er-i-ee?”

“Your human pet is safe. Killing her would have been easier, but out of respect for your apparent adoption of her, I have only sedated her. She is still in her bed in her room. If you play things right, she will wake up tomorrow, none the wiser, and your lives will continue as before, only better. Until then, you should understand that I am in complete control of your spark, which means I can control your actions to whatever extent I desire. Currently, my only desire is to prevent you from changing form and using force.”

Matrix-blue eyes screamed the hatred that the voice could not as Springer tested the restraints one last time.

“Are you done being difficult?”

A silent stare was the only reply.

“Very well…” Tarantulas reached out with a taloned claw and severed Springer’s gag, pulling it away.

He supposed he should’ve expected the spit that his creation launched at him, hitting him squarely in the chest, along with the words that followed. “Get the fuck out of here.” The rage in Springer’s voice came out like broken glass dragged through his throat. It broke Tarantulas’s spark to hear it directed at him from his son.

“I’m here to help you.”

“I don’t fucking care.”

“But you are broken.”

“I don’t fucking care.”

“And that, my dear child, is half of the problem. You have sustained damage from Aequitas and Impetus, and I must fix the damage that my creations caused you.”

“Your creations do nothing but damage. I’m no different. All those weapons you designed? Who do you think used them? All those people your weapons killed? Who do you think pulled their triggers? Everything you’ve ever created was meant to harm, maim, or destroy, myself included. So get the fuck out of here and let me finish the job of ridding the world of your creations.”

“Ostaros, don’t you-”

“DON’T CALL ME THAT!”

Tarantulas paused, drawing a hand over his optics, willing himself back to patience. “Fine. Springer, then. Do you not remember? Do you not understand that you were meant to be different? Do you not understand that you were not just an invention? Do you not understand that you are my offspring?”

Springer’s eyes closed as he suppressed the wave of nausea triggered by the suggestion. “The only reason you built me in the first place was so you could work out spark extraction. I owe my existence to being a necessary stepping stone to an atrocity.”

“Well, that’s how it started, yes,” Tarantulas admitted. “But once I realized what I had, once I realized what you were, once I realized you were alive, you ceased to be an invention. You became my greatest achievement. You became my child. I became a parent. I meant to nurture you. I meant to raise you.”

Springer’s eyes closed again, swallowing hard. “Thank Primus you never got the chance.”

Tarantulas clutched at his chest, pained by the hurt his son flung at him, but unable to blame him for it. Instead, he opted for a more validating alternative. “Prowl gave you the best raw materials Cybertron had to offer. You arrived at Kup’s feet as the ultimate diamond in the rough. He polished you into the perfect warrior. You served your people to the utmost of your abilities. You were given the best of everything and you paid with your life. You sacrificed yourself upon the Autobot altar of idealism. Is it any wonder you came out broken? Is it any wonder you cracked after charging into the suns of a thousand worlds? Is it any wonder that the damage you sustained goes beyond what your doctors can repair? I can fix you, Springer. I can heal you. Please allow me to finally be a parent to you. Please allow me to do this.”

Springer lifted his head, forcing his gaze to meet Tarantulas’s optics despite his revulsion. “You’re a lot better at destroying things. Stick to that.”

Tarantulas crossed his arms over his chest, understanding that Springer was not going to come around to this on his own. Putting Springer back under so he could go ahead with the repairs would be simple enough, but he understood his son well enough to know that consent was crucially important to him. Without that consent, Springer would not trust the outcome, would not trust his newfound well-being, would come to distrust every action, and would eventually take even greater measures to end his own life.

Who would Springer listen to?

Kup was the obvious answer, but that old codger would just as soon blast Tarantulas out of existence itself before giving him the time of day.

Who else?

Well, slag it. Of course.

The human pet.

Verity.

Tarantulas had to admit that her bluff of Megatron’s death had as much to do with Overlord’s downfall as the millions of deterrence chips machine-gunned into him by Springer and detonated by Ironfist. While she would not be immediately inclined to trust Tarantulas, she would be powerless against him and therefore more disposed to listen to reason. If he could convince her, she could convince Springer.

And even if she had not consented to the receipt of his prior services, she could hardly argue against the results, could she? At the very least, she owed him her life.

Tarantulas unfolded his arms and held a small metal canister out to Springer. “I am going to cut you loose. You are going to go upstairs with this container, hold it under the human’s nose, and it will wake her up. You will then bring her down here and we will all discuss this like rational beings until you understand that it is in your best interest to be repaired.”

“Fuck off.”

“Then we will sit here and stare at each other until she dies of starvation under sedation because you failed to act.”

Springer heaved a sigh. “Fine. I’ll bring her down. Just… let me materialize some clothes first.”

“Ah yes, bare skin being one of the many North American human taboos. Very well.” Tarantulas severed Springer’s bindings and loosened the avatar’s restrictions just enough to allow Springer his usual jeans, socks, and sweater. He handed Springer the canister, which fit easily in the palm of his hand. “Do not open it until you are ready to wake her, and close it immediately after. Its contents are highly volatile. Given the flame in your primary heat source, it should not remain open for any longer than necessary, and not on this level of this structure at all.”

Springer closed his fist around the container and turned to head up the stairs without a word.

“Uh… what is that smell?”

Verity struggled through the haze of sleep, grogginess clinging to her with an unusual ferocity, nonetheless compelled to fight through it to put an end to the obnoxious odor interrupting her slumber.

She awoke to find Springer sitting beside her, dressed, but hair still disheveled as if he’d just gotten out of bed, a haunted expression on his face. The clock at her bedside read 2 AM.

“What’s…”

“I am so sorry,” he said, interrupting her. He then dropped his voice to a whisper. “I need you not to say anything for a few seconds, ok?”

She nodded, immediately alert.

He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Tarantulas is downstairs.”

Oh god. Oh god no…

To her credit, she remained silent, nodding to indicate that she understood.

Springer handed her a small canister with one hand and held up her tablet with the other. He had opened the text editor and written a few lines:

He has me locked down, but I don’t think he’s going to hurt us. He says I’m broken and wants to fix me, but, y’know, fuck that. I think he’s been hitching a ride on me this whole time. I think he’s going to have you try to “reason” with me. He sedated you. The contents of this canister woke you up, but it’s explosive. Might come in handy with the stove. Get the chef’s knife to me if you can manage it. I promised you I would take care of the spiders.

“Chef’s knife?” She mouthed the words, unable to appreciate the irony of their previous discussion about spider extermination at the moment.

He pretended like he was holding a round object with his right hand and made slicing motions with his left. The one I chopped the onion with. She nodded, remembering breakfast yesterday morning, remembering how she had noticed Springer using the knife with his left hand, the same hand he’d always handled his saber with, always using his right for his blaster. Again, she nodded understanding. She pulled at the corner of her PJs and mouthed, “Can I get dressed first?”

Springer gave her shoulder one last squeeze and nodded. “Yeah,” he said, his voice now at a normal volume. “I’ll wait outside the door.”

They headed down the stairs together. When they reached the landing, Springer held his arms aloft. “Verity, Dad. Dad, Verity. I believe you’ve met before.”

Tarantulas shrugged noncommittally, understanding Springer’s sarcasm for what it was.

Verity stood frozen on the landing for a moment, attempting to come to grips with the monstrosity that had been invading what she had come to finally accept as a safe haven over the last few days. “I need some tea. May I get some tea?”

Tarantulas shrugged again. “Very well.”

Springer slowly crossed the living room from the landing to the table by the back window, obstructing Tarantulas’s view of Verity, hoping she was crossing the kitchen behind him to the knives held to the magnetic strip on the wall. He didn’t hear the distinctive thump of the blade being pulled from the strip, but he did hear her open the drawer below it, rustling for a spoon, presumably multitasking. Good girl.

He seated himself at the right end of the table, stealing a glance of the room’s reflection in the window, able to confirm that the knife was missing from its position while misleading Tarantulas’s gaze to the outside darkness instead. “Make some for me too.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll just make up a kettle.” Lots of near-boiling liquid was a better weapon than a little.

Tarantulas took the seat at the other end of the table, not wishing to have his back to Verity, and not wishing to be pinned between the table and the window. Instead, he was pinned by the unblinking stare of his son. Undeterred, he sat back in his chair. “I would like to sample this… tea… as well.”

“Fine,” Verity replied.

A few minutes later she brought everything over, slipping the knife into Springer’s left hand, palm up and ready, under the table as she poured his cup, her old pick-pocketing skills just as adept at placing things as they were at taking things. His eyes never left Tarantulas’s optics, but she felt the tip of his toes gently nudge hers under the table. She nudged back, poured the other two cups, then sat at the middle of the table. She knew it killed Springer to have her sit between him and the enemy, but she also knew that the present arrangement gave him a better throwing angle with the knife, so she slouched back in her chair, out of the line of fire.

“So…” she said, dipping her tea. “Quite a little family reunion here.”

“Yes, quite,” Tarantulas agreed. “Did you know that Springer tried to kill himself yesterday?”

A clatter rang out from the other end of the table as Springer fumbled his spoon.

Don’t you dare drop that knife.

Verity refused to let her eyes flick to Springer’s direction, instead forcing herself to stare at her tea. “What makes you say that?”

“Did you not notice the broken snow cornice where you found Springer yesterday?”

She pulled the bag of tea from her cup, placed it on the spoon, wrapped the string around it, and pressed out the remaining water, but did not otherwise respond.

“He walked out onto it. I don’t think he meant to. He wasn’t really paying attention to where he was going. He could have escaped, but he chose not to. The cornice broke and he fell. I pulled him back. His collision with the local flora was an accident. For that, I apologize.”

Finally, Verity’s gaze slid to Springer. “Is this true?” Her voice was a low whisper, even if she knew Tarantulas could still hear it.

Springer’s right hand was curled into a tight fist. He took a deep breath and forced his fingers to straighten. Four lines were carved into his palm where his fingernails had embedded into it. His eyes had still not left Tarantulas.

“Is this true?” Verity repeated.

Finally, he met her gaze, saying nothing. His eyes, those hard, brilliant blue eyes, said it all. Do you have my back or not?

“Springer is damaged in ways that are beyond Autobot surgeons’ abilities to fix,” Tarantulas continued. “Much like Aequitas damaged you, Verity, it damaged Springer. Impetus damaged him further. But much like I fixed you, I can fix him. I only wish to gain his consent before I do so.” He took a tentative sip of tea, pulled the cup back for a moment as if to examine it, then drank the whole steaming thing down in one fell gulp. He returned the mug to the table with a sharp clap. “That was quite delicious! May I have some more?”

Verity’s gaze lingered on Springer for a moment before she complied, pouring more water into the mug before Tarantulas and sliding another packaged bag toward him.

“Hm! Thank you very much,” he said, preparing another serving in the same way he had seen her prepare her own before. “As I was saying, I am responsible for Springer’s otherwise irreparable damage. My understanding is that, although he was willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good for much of his life, he was not actively suicidal until after I subjected him to Impetus. Being one of my own creations, he is uniquely vulnerable to my other devices. I wish merely to repair what I am responsible for, and then leave you both to your respective lives.”

“How do we know you won’t mess with him beyond that?” Verity asked. “How do we know you won’t just kill him?”

“HE IS MY CHILD!” Springer could hear the window shimmer from the bellow of his creator, threatening to shatter, barely holding itself together. Tarantulas looked at his hands, apparently surprised to find them curled up and slammed to the table. He lifted them and put them in his lap, suddenly docile. “He is my child,” he repeated. “However unknowingly, I have harmed my own child. I would never harm him on purpose. I will never forgive myself for not recognizing him for who he was before I put him in harm’s way. I, of all people, should have recognized the spark before me as my own creation. Prowl lied to me, told me my dear Ostaros had perished. At first, I thought myself an idiot for believing him, but it appears he has become quite the master of manipulation, so I am more inclined to forgive myself that one slip. I will not, however, forgive myself of the damage I have caused my son. I wish only to fix what I am responsible for. To pull him back from the brink of his wish to exterminate his own life, a wish embedded by my other creations. Springer is broken in other ways, to be sure, and I am confident in his ability to come to terms with those ways with the help of Autobot medical and psychiatric professionals. But they are utterly unqualified to heal the damage I have caused him.” Tarantulas lowered his gaze, removed the teabag from his mug, and took a healthy swallow. “Besides,” he said, turning his attention from Springer to Verity. “I fixed you, didn’t I?”

Unable to meet the gaze of the monster to her left, she turned back to Springer. “Is it true, Springer? Were you going to let yourself die yesterday?”

Springer remained silent, his stare continuing to focus on Tarantulas.

“I saved him before, back in the Noisemaze. Do you remember when I threw you out of the Tor the first time, Springer? I saw the charges you laid. I knew you meant to destroy it all. I kicked you up, out of danger. You could have escaped and detonated the charges from a safe distance. But you didn’t. You came back down. You lied to Impactor. You had every intention of dying there.”

Springer spoke for the first time since sitting at the table. “I had every intention of killing you.”

“You said it yourself. You have a flight mode. You could have left. I could have died when you detonated the charges in the Tor.”

“The fact that we survived that detonation proves me right,” Springer cut in. “I had to see it through. I had to kill you myself. I failed.”

“Because I saved us both! You could not have known that I could survive the detonation. You were either so bloodthirsty that your dying act was to kill me, or you were so suicidal that you threw yourself back into the Tor, knowing that if you couldn’t hear Impactor, he couldn’t hear you, knowing you would die. I know my son. I know you are not a bloodthirsty murderer. I saved you at the Tor. I saved you here. I will continue to save you until you let me fix you, and then I will do as you wish and leave you. Springer, if you hear anything I say, please here this,” Tarantulas paused, realizing that his hands were shaking, placing them on the table to stop it. “With any non-sentient artificial intelligence, the creation is no better than its creator. The creation has all of its creator’s flaws and limitations. You… you have surpassed me in so many ways. I have only ever lived to fulfill my own desires. To see my own creativity make its mark on the world. You… you only wanted to make the world a better place. But not the way that Prowl wanted to do it. You wanted to do it right. Do it by the right rules. You worked for Prowl’s vision with Ultra Magnus’s rules tempered by Kup’s pragmatism carried by the strength Prowl and I gave you and… you just… you just did it. You are so much more than I ever could be, and I am so… I am so proud of you, Springer. I know it pains you to hear it from someone like me, and I understand that. I understand that you function at a level that I have never cared to grasp. I understand that I am abhorrent to you, and I understand why. With all of that in mind, all I ask is that you allow me to repair what I broke. Then I will leave. I may watch you from afar, but I will no longer interfere. I promise you that. But I will watch. Because I do love you, and if you ever need me, I will return to you. But only if you ask.”

Verity’s jaw hung roughly to her sternum. She didn’t realize it until she turned to face Springer, catching her own reflection in the darkened window. She was able to crank her mouth shut, but she was unable to dry her face of the tears that had streamed from her eyes. Springer had a parent! An honest-to-god parent who actually cared for him! A monster of a parent to be sure, but… god… one who actually wanted the best for his child. One who recognized the harm he’d caused to his child and wanted to fix it. One who was able to fix it. That was more… far more… than Verity had ever had herself. “Springer…” she whispered. “You’re going to hate me for this, but… he has a point.”

Springer was trembling. Just barely perceptible, but she could see it in his shoulders and hear it in the almost silent chattering of his teeth. His eyes had still not left Tarantulas. Then, in a whisper she could barely hear, “Dammit, Verity.”

“What?”

Before she could react, before she could do anything to stop him, he was throwing the knife. To her horror, he had transferred it to his right hand, away from her, and it was in the air. And then he was on the table, clambering for his tormenter, the footing of wool socks unsure and slippery on the varnish of the wooden table.

Without thinking, she grabbed his ankle.

Grabbing a newly-retired soldier currently operating on nothing but rage and reflexes never ends well for the grabber.

He lost his balance and slammed to the table.

He turned over.

He kicked her in the face.

Verity was launched backwards, over her chair, and landed on the floor.

Fuck! Oh, fuck me... Fuck me fuck me fuck me…

Springer scrambled off the table, reflexively putting himself between Verity and Tarantulas, rushing to her position. “Verity!” He reached her side, not trusting himself to touch her. To his relief, her eyes opened. “I’m sorry…” He saw her hauling off with her right fist but did nothing to avoid what he knew was coming.

She punched him in the face.

It didn’t do much more than turn his head, but it did give him pause. He remained still, crouched on the floor over her, replaying recent events in his head. “I deserved that,” he said.

“You’re goddamn right you did,” she responded.

“So!” Tarantulas interrupted. They both turned to see him still seated at the table, holding the knife that Springer had thrown at him. He turned it over and buried the tip several centimeters into the wood. “Does this mean ‘yes’?”

Verity picked herself up to a seated position, still on the floor. “What assurance do we have that you’ll actually leave once you’re done?”

“I can activate an internal beacon and give you the key to its signal. You will know where I am at all times and can avoid me as you wish. I will not pursue you. Alternatively, should Springer ever need me, he can activate the key.”

“Not coming to my rescue, huh?” Verity snarked.

“You’re on your own, bloodbag.”

Verity grabbed Springer by the collar of his sweater, redirecting his attention. When he finally brought his eyes to hers, she spoke. “You realize you’re messed up, right? You need to do this.”

He looked at her for a long time, saying nothing, those blue eyes unblinking. Finally, he spoke. “I can’t stand the thought of him touching me.”

“Are you telling me you’d rather die?”

She was only able to hold his gaze for a few more moments before his eyes slid down and to the side, unable to stand looking at her. “You have no idea what’s going on in my head. You have no idea how hard it is to listen to it all.”

“Because you’re broken, Springer. Your mind is broken. Let him fix it. You wouldn’t walk around on a broken leg, would you? I mean, not for any longer than you absolutely had to, right? You’d let First Aid fix it once you knew everyone else was taken care of. But First Aid can’t fix this. Ratchet can’t fix this. Whatever Aequitas did to you, he missed it, and he doesn’t miss anything he can fix. And you’ve been different since Impetus. You talk in your sleep. Did you know that? You didn’t know that? You slur your words, but I know what you’re saying. Before, it was all ‘Goddammit Whirl’ or ‘Prowl you asshole’ and that was all fine. It was actually kind of funny. But since we got here? Do you know what I wake up to every night? You muttering about how it’s all your fault. ‘My fault. My fault.’ Over and over again. It’s not right, Springer. It’s not you. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Springer closed his eyes, clearly struggling against himself. “What if he’s lying? He’s… a bigger monster than Prowl. What if he’s lying?”

Verity brought a hand to Springer’s shoulder, then slid it up to the side of his head, careful not to touch his face directly again, careful to go only for his left side. Still, he turned his face away, eyes still closed, a thin line of tears forming at their corners. “Yeah, he’s a monster alright, but he’s not Prowl. He’s manipulative, but I don’t think he can look you right in the face and lie to you. Not you, anyway. Whatever he’s done to other people, whatever he thinks about any other living being in the universe, you’re different. I know it turns your stomach to hear it, but you are his creation. He genuinely cares about you.”

Springer gagged once more at the thought of being Tarantulas’s offspring. “I just want this all to end.”

Verity tightened her grip on his shoulder. “I think he can make that happen. The worst of it, anyway. I think you should let him try.”

He was silent for a few more moments, eyes still closed. “Dammit, Verity.”

“I know.”

“Ok. Fine.”

Springer rolled his ground vehicle mode into the front shed under his own power. The squally storms of the day before had mostly subsided, but the shed would still provide the protection from the elements that Tarantulas required.

Verity, clad in her armor, rolled the shed door closed as soon as Springer’s rear tires cleared the opening. The interior was lit by a few large incandescent bulbs hung from the rafters; on the dim side of her preference for what was about to happen, but Tarantulas seemed to think conditions were acceptable, so she went with it.

Tarantulas waited for the sounds of Springer shifting himself into a stationary gear and applying his parking brake before popping the hood. In short order, he had pulled a length of energon conduit and handed it to Verity. To her, it looked like a fuel hose with a bulb in the middle. Even through her armor, it felt warm in her hand.

Tarantulas pointed to the bulb. “Under normal circumstances, I would put him on a circulator while I worked. Under these primitive conditions, the best we can do is have you squeeze that bulb once every two seconds. You will be his power regulator… his… heart… for half an hour. If you fail, he will die, and I will kill you. I will be very, very, slow about it. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“If I survive and you kill her anyway,” Springer responded, “I’ll kill you. I’ll be even slower about it.”

Tarantulas heaved a sigh. “Understood. Now, so we’re all clear about the procedure…” He flexed his fingers, preparing. “I will go microscopic once I reach Springer’s brain module. It will be some time before I reach the point where I can initiate his shutdown protocol. Springer, you may feel… itchy during that interval. Please do not scratch. I will tell Springer when I am ready to shut him down, whereupon he will give me and Verity a five-second countdown. At the end of the countdown, I will initiate shutdown, and Verity will initiate circulation two second later. The procedure should take approximately twenty-five minutes. When I am done, I will put Springer into warm-boot phase. Verity will hear his ventilation fans activate, at which point she must cease circulation; Springer will be able to do it himself at that point while his systems recalibrate. This phase will last approximately ten minutes. During this time, once I am sure the procedure has been successful, I will leave. You will not notice me. Springer will regain consciousness after the completion of the warm-boot phase. Does everyone understand?”

“Yes,” Verity and Springer replied at the same time.

“Very well. My experience with the both of you has been… enlightening. Farewell.”

With that, he transformed to spider mode and shrunk down to about mouse size, bounced off the front end of Springer’s engine compartment, and dove in.

“Nnnnnuuuugh… I can… I can feel him crawling in me…”

“I know,” Verity ran a hand along his fender, trying to distract him. “It shouldn’t take him long to get to where he’s going.”

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into letting him crawl inside my brain. I must be out of my goddamn mind.”

“Yes, you are out of your goddamn mind. That’s why I’m standing here in a shed with your primary fuel line in my hand at three in the morning. You’re cooking me bacon for the rest of my life to make up for this, you know.”

“You won’t live very long if all you eat is bacon. Oh, hey, he’s ready. God, he’s… he’s in my brain…”

Silence ensued for several moments.

“Springer?”

“Yeah, yeah. I can’t believe I’m doing this… Ok. Here we go. Five. Four. Three. Two. One…”

Springer’s normal ambient hum suddenly cut out. Verity did a two-count and squeezed the bulb in her hand.

Oh, my darling child!

I have damaged you so!

But I will make this right,

I will make you right again!

For half an hour, Verity circulated Springer’s energon, his life in her hands in a more literal sense than she cared to ever experience again.

Alone in the shed, in the middle of the Alaskan night, the wind still kicking up the occasional gust outside, standing vigil over an ancient Cybertronian who had thrown himself at death more times than he could count, forcing his lifeblood through his lines, unwilling to let him give up and die.

As promised, his vent fans kicked on, and she stopped squeezing the bulb. As promised, she could hear his power regulator spin up, could feel the energon surge through the fuel line. She did not notice the mouse-sized spider drop to the floor and scramble out under the door.

Ten minutes later, an audible click sounded in her helmet as Springer’s com activated. “Verity?”

“Yeah? Everything ok?”

“Give me a second…”

She watched a monitor on his dashboard through a window as he ran through a self-diagnostic.

“Yeah, everything checks out.”

“Where is he?”

“Ten miles out, heading south. Headed to Anchorage, I guess.” He materialized his avatar next to her, taking his own fuel line and fitting it back in place in his engine compartment. He then went to his front end and lowered the hood, breathing a sigh of relief as it clicked into place.

“Do you feel… better?”

His gaze lost focus for several moments, as if searching for the right answer. “A little early to tell, I think. But… maybe.” His eyes regained focus as he looked around the shed. “Let’s get out of here.”

His real self parked comfortably outside, Verity and the avatar headed back into the cabin. Springer went directly to the freezer and came back with an icepack. “Your face is turning purple already.”

Verity took the pack and headed for the living room couch, sighing at the relief from the cold against the swelling. “I suppose I should’ve stayed out of kicking range of a guy named ‘Springer,’ of all things.”

He sat at the other end of the couch, sensing her need for space. “I was able to pull the shot a little, once I realized what was happening. Not like that helps. I didn’t break anything, did I?”

“No.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“I know.”

An awkward silence hung over them for several minutes, neither one sure of what to say.

Suddenly, Verity laughed.

“Man, I fought Overlord with you and I came out without a scratch. We go up against an oversized spider together and I get a black eye. That’s gotta’ be some kind of story, right?” She turned to catch Springer’s gaze.

He allowed himself half of a smile. “Magnus is going to put me in a sling when he sees it.”

“I’ll handle Uncle Magnus. You’ll have enough on your hands letting everyone know that Tarantulas is here.”

“Preliminary report is already filed,” Springer tapped his head. “Not like they’re ever going to find him.”

“You’re not going to tell them about the beacon?”

“I haven’t decided yet. I think he’ll lay low for a while. He’ll cut the beacon before he does something I’ll be compelled to rat him out on.”

“Are you going to follow through on the other stuff? Talk to Rung?”

“I’ll get on his calendar for an eval. Once he confirms Tarantulas did what he said he would, he’ll refer me out to someone who handles decommissions.”

Verity nodded. “So what’s next for us? Do we stay here?”

“We’re as safe here as we are anywhere else. Might as well stay. As for what’s next…” Springer heaved himself off the couch. “Back to bed. Weather should be good for flying in the morning.”

For the first time since Verity had ever slept within earshot of Springer, he made it through the night without talking in his sleep.

Ok. He might have mumbled something about bacon.