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She thought she was hallucinating, at first. It was Roboccam’s Razor: the simplest explanation is the one most likely to be true. She’d been working long shifts as of late, and hadn’t really been speaking to anyone. There was always play aboard The Ark, but Windblade hadn’t felt the urge to engage in it. So when she saw a glimpse of purple wings out of the corner of her eye and turned to see no one there, she’d brushed it off. Just tired. Get rest.
It was an easy enough fix. She had always prided herself on her well-maintained recharge schedule, even when she was in school back on Caminus. Even through finals. But as soon as she slipped into dreams, she saw a face above her. Slipstreams’, leaning down over her recharging form. She was smiling, and not a lopsided, smirky, arrogant smile either, but a genuine one, if one tinged with a bit of mischief. Her eyes slammed open, but Slipstream wasn’t there. Only the darkness of her room.
She hadn’t really thought of Slipstream since Windblade and Wheeljack had given Bludgeon what had been coming to him. At least, she’d tried not to think of her. But there were hours, long hours of various monotonous duties, wherein her thoughts couldn’t help but stray. In another lifetime, they could’ve been friends. They could’ve easily been friends. Maybe instead of Chromia, Windblade could have roomed with Slipstream while she stayed on Cybertron. Maybe instead of Bumblebee, she could’ve run into Slipstream outside of that Cube game.
The ideas chased her back into recharge.
When she woke up again, there was still no sign of Slipstream. Windblade rubbed her eye with one hand and went to go check up on the bridge. Nothing had gone wrong while she was gone, at least. Nobody had even seemed to notice her absence.
“Hey Windblade,” Bumblebee greeted her cheerily as she walked in. “You’ll never guess what Hot Rod, Cheetor, and I got up to today!”
She laughed softly. “I bet I won’t.”
And with that Bumblebee launched into a tangent about a destroyed planet and him and his buddies becoming leaders of three warring factions but Windblade wasn’t listening to all the details, because she could see Slipstream, standing there, leaning against the dashboard. It was her, her whole body, wings fluttering, smiling that same mischievous smile from Windblade’s dream. Windblade blinked once, twice, but Slipstream didn’t move or vanish.
“Windblade?” Bumblebee said, waving a hand in front of her face. “You good?”
“Yeah.” She turned her attention back to Bumblebee. “Just fine. Sorry. I just woke up.”
“Ah. I know how that is. Hey, do you think you could teach me how to use a sword? I already asked Drift but he said no.”
Windblade flicked her gaze back to where Slipstream had been standing, but it was only Arcee there, her back to Windblade.
“I’ll think about it,” she told Bumblebee. If Slipstream would bother leaving her thoughts alone for two minutes.
Windblade returned to her room after her shift with no further signs of Slipstream. Her door slid open, and Windblade almost fell over upon the sight of Slipstream sitting on the floor, cross-legged, smiling up at Windblade. “No, it’s okay,” Slipstream said. “I’ll give you a moment to take it all in. It was quite a shock for me as well.”
“How are you here?” Windblade finally spluttered out. “I mean, I’ve been seeing you, but I thought I was just hallucinating.”
“You’re telling me,” Slipstream replied. “I thought I’d died and gone to the Afterspark. I was confused on why the Afterspark looked like The Ark and was full of Autobots I’d thought were still alive. And why none of them could see me.”
“No one else can see you?”
“Nope. Just you. Lucky us I guess.”
“And why are you here?”
Slipstream shrugged. “I’m guessing it’s because the Allspark is here. But don’t ask me why you’re the only one who can see me. I haven’t the faintest clue.” She nodded towards Windblade’s recharge slab. “Go on. Sit. It’s your room. There’s a reason I’m sitting on the floor. And for the love of Primus close the door. They’ll think you’re crazy, talking to empty air.”
Windblade shut the door and sat down. “How long has it been?”
“It’s hard to say. A week. Give or take. I kinda fade in and out a bit? The world will disappear around me and when it comes back hours have passed. Though it only feels like moments on my end.”
Speaking to Slipstream, everything felt more real. She was here and she was real and she was—“You died,” Windblade said, interrupting her own train of thought. “Bludgeon stabbed you through the chest. Through the spark.”
Slipstream scowled. “Yeah I know. Piece of trash. What was his damage anyway? I was just trying to warn people about what a piece of garbage Starscream was and then bam—stabbed through the spark for my trouble. No good deed goes unpunished and all that. That’ll show me for trying to save all of Cybertronian kind. Speaking of—what happened to Starscream anyway? I’m assuming he didn’t succeed.”
“I—he did try to kill us. It was like you said. But we stopped him. He’s in the brig now. We have the Allspark and we’re heading back to Cybertron.” Windblade paused. “I tried to kill Bludgeon too.”
The corners of Slipstream’s mouth lifted a little. “Oh.” She leaned back against the wall, extending her legs and turning to fully face Windblade. “Did you do it for me?”
What was Windblade supposed to do? Lie? “Yes.”
Slipstream hummed contentedly. “That’s very sweet of you, Bird. An especially sweet thing to do for someone who’d been trying to kill you up until that point. May be the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me, period, if I’m being honest.”
That’s kind of sad, Windblade thought, though she didn’t give voice to it. Slipstream’s tone was almost flirty, and far too familiar for someone who, like she’d said, had tried to kill her so many times. Windblade shifted uncomfortably on her slab. Why had she fought Bludgeon? It would have turned out quite badly for her had Wheeljack not shown up in the nick of time. “You were trying to change,” she said, justifying her actions to herself as well as Slipstream.
Slipstream snorted. “Was I? I didn’t want to die at Starscream’s hands. I didn’t want everyone I knew to die in the same manner. Was that change or just self-preservation?”
“If it was self-preservation, it didn’t work very well,” Windblade pointed out.
“You got me there. Still: you’re alive. Your Autobuddies are alive. You’re welcome. Oh—I’m fading again, by the way. I’ll see you in a bit.”
Windblade leapt up from her slab, swiping at Slipstream’s form as it faded away. “Wait, please!” But she was already gone, and Windblade was alone in her room again. The smile that had crept across Slipstream’s face when Windblade had told her about her face-off with Bludgeon had lit something up inside her. She held her hand in the space where Slipstream had been. It tingled ever so slightly. Could Slipstream see her now? Probably not. Windblade pressed her palm to her cheek and left it there for a long moment.
She should probably tell Wheeljack about this. He might be able to make some sense of it all. Hell, she should tell Optimus about this, because ghost or not, Slipstream was a Decepticon with free range of The Ark. She could wreak all manner of havoc. But she didn’t move. She didn’t open a comm link to any of her friends. She just knelt across from where Slipstream had been sitting.
Windblade’s next shift on the bridge was the communications hub, fielding incoming signals and potential alerts from Cybertron. It was several hours long, several hours of nothing, because they hadn’t heard from Cybertron at all on their return journey. And who else would contact them? Space bloomed black and purple before here, the lights of the communications hub blinking on and off, on and off, on and off, in a hypnotic rhythm. Windblade replayed her conversation with Slipstream over and over in her head.
She was here. Not alive, but here nonetheless. And she said it was because they had the Allspark. Which meant her consciousness, her spark, lay within it somehow, or was connected to it. Her body. They’d left it on Earth. Buried it. And that spirit couldn’t return to it, not anytime soon, if such a thing were even possible. And why would Windblade want to put her back in her body? Slipstream had said it herself: she hadn’t changed. Her act had been one of pure self preservation, nothing more—
“Boo!” a voice came from immediately behind her.
Windblade nearly flew out of her chair. “Primus!” Slipstream had returned, grinning wildly.
Arcee looked up from down the console. “Is everything alright?”
Windblade mustered a smile that she hoped looked genuine. “Of course. Sorry, I—just started to pass out a bit.”
Arcee laughed. “I get that. Nothing’s happening.”
Indeed, Windblade, Arcee, and Prowl were the only ones on the bridge. Even Optimus had disappeared elsewhere. “No kidding,” Slipstream added unhelpfully. “At least on The Nemesis you can watch the Waves bicker when you need entertainment.”
“Is that what you call them?” Windblade asked incredulously, keeping her voice low so that Arcee wouldn’t hear. “‘The Waves’?”
“Of course. Thundercracker and Acid Storm gave everyone a nickname.”
“They did?”
“Yep. Megatron was Megsy, Shockwave and Soundwave were the Waves, Shadowstriker was Mean-Eye Striker, Clobber was Nuthead, and Lockdown was Bolts For Brains. And so on, of course. Even a couple of Autobots got the treatment.”
Windblade swiveled her chair around. “Oh? Did I?”
“Since we only met once we got to Earth, I named you after one of Earth’s creatures, the annoying ones that fly, because you were annoying and flew. You were Bird.”
Bird. “I kind of like it.”
“Really? You’re not supposed to. Bumblebee was The Yellow Idiot. Optimus was HBIC—Head Blockhead In Charge.”
Windblade noticed something. “You say ‘was’ and ‘were’. All past tense.”
Slipstream sighed. “Yeah, well, I don’t exactly have a leg to stand on with insulting nicknames these days. I can’t call Optimus the Head Blockhead In Charge when I’m the Dead Blockhead In Charge.” She leaned up against the console. “Not that I was ever really in charge of anything. The second I get promoted my underlings go crazy and then I get stabbed. Totally unfair. And now—do you know what happened to them?”
“To who?”
“My Seekers. I can feel them, sometimes, just before I black out. They’re with me. In the Allspark.”
“They died?”
“I assume.”
“Then why aren’t they haunting this place too?”
“Maybe they are,” Slipstream spat back, perhaps with a little more venom than she’d been intending. “Maybe you just haven’t seen them.”
“Have you seen them?”
Slipstream sat down on the floor again. “No.” She hugged her knees up to her chest. “It was good. We were good. For a little while. A long while, actually. When all of us were peers, working for and making fun of Starscream. I know that they were never going to see me as their superior, no matter what Megatron said, and I can almost understand it, but—what I don’t understand is why they abandoned the whole cause. Abandoned me, betrayed me, betrayed us all for that screechy clown who Thundercracker used to call ‘ Screamer ’. Stupid. Threw their sparks away for nothing.”
And then, without warning, Slipstream faded away again. Windblade was less surprised this time, but just as disappointed. She’d wanted to see if she could touch Slipstream. She’d spoken of the other Seekers with such fondness, fondness Windblade hadn’t experienced from other Decepticons. Maybe she really had changed. Or maybe she’d always been like this. Fond of her own, but still that Decepticon flavor of bad.
Arcee leaned over again. “So who were you talking to?”
Shit. She’d forgotten to keep her voice down. “No one.”
“Right. No one.” Arcee giggled. “I mean, you were obviously comming someone. And the comms don’t go all the way to Cybertron. So it’s gotta be someone onboard. And since you won’t tell me who it is, I am forced to assume you have a secret sweetspark on The Ark.”
Phew. Better Arcee assume she was seeing someone in secret than know she was talking to the ghost of a Decepticon. She gave Arcee her tensest, most pleading smile. “Please don’t tell anyone.”
“Of course not! Your secret’s safe with me. I have a sparkmate too, y’know. Left her back on Cybertron, but we’ll be back together soon!”
“Right, well, I think our shifts are up, and Bumblebee and Hot Rod are late to take over. Again.”
Windblade wandered The Ark for a long while, looking for another purpose, something to fill her hours and distract her from thoughts of Slipstream. Although she was obviously looking forward to returning to Cybertron, The Ark was seeming more and more cold and sterile compared to the lush greenery of Earth. She ended up leafing through the photos Arcee had taken of the planet, just trying to reminisce.
When she returned to her room, she was relieved to see Slipstream sitting there on the floor once again. “Hello, Bird.”
“Hi, Slipstream.”
“Tell me about Bludgeon. I wanted to ask earlier but I got distracted.”
“There isn’t much to tell.”
“Is he still alive? You managed to walk away from whatever scrape it was just fine.”
“I don’t know if he’s alive. Wheeljack saved my ass, if I’m being honest. He slapped a gravity device thingy on him and then he floated away and I didn’t see him again. You can sit on the recharge slab if you’d like.”
Slipstream stood up. “I’d rather not sit. Take me on a tour of The Ark.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a Decepticon! This is our home base!”
“I’m dead! ” Slipstream screeched. “I’m deceased! I’ve expired! I’m no longer living! You’re the only one who can see or hear me, I can’t touch anything, and because I’m tethered to the Allspark, I can’t exactly leave until we get to Cybertron. I am currently less threatening than a newborn cyberkit. Please. Just show me The Ark.”
“You can’t touch anything?” Windblade asked quietly.
Slipstream responded by shoving her arm through Windblade’s chest. It was a sensation unlike any other. It electrified every aspect of Windblade’s senses, like a jolt of lightning sent through her entire frame. The jolt faded, and was replaced by intense tingling, radiating from her core outwards. Windblade didn’t move, didn’t pull back. She just watched Slipstream’s bored expression. For a moment Slipstream’s form seemed to grow less translucent, more solid, and the arm in her chest felt more like an arm in her chest , her discomfort growing. Two beings should not be occupying the same space like this.
But then Slipstream whipped her arm back out. “There. Happy? That’s the most I can do to anyone.”
Windblade swallowed hard. “I’ll show you The Ark.”
“Thank you.”
The Ark was not very interesting to Windblade these days, likely because she knew it so well. “And here’s Wheeljack’s lab,” she explained. She could see through the window that Wheeljack was within, deeply engrossed in whatever strange gadget he was building this time.
“He’s the one who saved you from Bludgeon?” Slipstream asked.
“Yes.”
“If you got Shockwave totally trashed he’d speak fondly of him.”
“And how often did Shockwave get ‘totally trashed’?”
“That I witnessed? Once during the whole war. I kind of admire his dedication to sobriety—I don’t think I could go that long. But then again, Shockwave wasn’t an omegalomaniac’s direct subordinate.”
“Don’t you mean ‘megalomaniac’?”
“I said what I said.”
“I suppose you were all Megatron’s direct subordinates.”
“That we were.” Slipstream grinned wickedly. “And if I never see him again, it'll be too soon.”
Windblade couldn’t help it. She laughed. She laughed terribly, leaning against Wheeljack’s door, her head clanking against the porthole. Slipstream laughed too. It wasn’t funny, not even a little, but it felt good. “You all didn’t like him?”
“Of course not! Some of us admired him, sure, and we all feared him but liked? Liked? Gimme a damn break.”
“I gain new insights into the Decepticon world every day.”
“Hey, maybe if we understood each other better, this war wouldn’t have gone on so long.”
“I sincerely doubt that.”
“Yeah. That’s fair.”
At that moment, Wheeljack swung open the door to his lab and Windblade almost went crashing to the ground. “Windblade?” he asked. “Is everything alright?”
“Yeah,” she said, stifling another giggle as Slipstream howled with laughter across from her. “Just remembered something funny.”
“Alright. Just take it easy, okay?”
“No problem.”
Slipstream only laughed harder as Wheeljack closed the door. “He’s got such a stupid accent. Wiiindblayde, is everythin’ awrigh’? ” she mimicked.
“That’s mean!” Windblade said.
“I’m mean!” Slipstream shouted. “That was my nickname: Meany Slipstreamy.”
“That’s a powerful nickname.”
“I was proud of it.”
Windblade looked around. “So how does The Ark stack up to The Nemesis?”
“It’s pretty similar. I’m pretty sure Shockwave’s lab is even in the same place as Wheeljack’s. Except everything on The Nemesis is painted dark gray, black, or purple.”
“Purple?”
“Megatron’s favorite color. He can’t get enough of it. He’d paint the whole Nemesis purple if it didn’t cause camouflage issues.”
“You’re purple.”
“Yeah, unfortunately that didn’t really help endear me to him any.”
They were silent for a long moment. “I don’t think you’re mean,” Windblade told Slipstream honestly.
“You don’t really know me,” Slipstream replied.
I want to, Windblade wanted to say. But that would be saying too much. “Let’s keep going,” she said instead. They didn’t get too much farther, however, before Slipstream vanished once more.
It wasn’t that Windblade didn’t have friends. She’d always had friends. She was a friendly person. There’d been Nautica and Chromia back on Caminus, Bumblebee and Perceptor on Cybertron, Grimlock, Hot Rod, and the others on Earth and The Ark. But her friendship with Slipstream, as new and tentative as it was, felt different. Windblade wasn’t lonely. The opposite, in fact. Sometimes she got overwhelmed by the sheer amount of interaction she had to perform on a day to day basis. She wasn’t lonely, but she could sense Slipstream’s loneliness. It reverberated back into her spark like light bouncing off a mirror. It echoed in her every word, her every movement: the way she sat on the floor, her knees to her chest, how she called herself mean, how she reminisced about the Decepticons even while complaining about them...a question formulated in Windblade’s mind.
It was nearly a whole day before she got the chance to ask it, though. Nearly a whole day before Slipstream returned, this time appearing flat on her back, lying spread eagle on Windblade’s recharge slab. “I suppose you only invited me to sit here,” she said as Windblade walked in the door. “Not lie down.”
“You’ve been gone a while.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
Windblade knew she was being sincere, though her voice carried a sardonic edge. “I had a question.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t fade away before you answer it.”
“I don’t control when I fade.”
“I can’t know that.”
“Just ask the damn question.”
“Have you changed? Really? The way I hoped you had when I went after Bludgeon?”
Slipstream didn’t answer. She only sat up, and then stood slowly, so that her eyes were parallel with Windblade’s. “I can’t know that, Bird,” she said softly, echoing Windblade’s words.
“Why not?”
“Because change isn’t thought or word, it’s action. And since I can’t do anything , there’s no way for me to change, or to prove I’ve changed, to you or anyone else. I can say I never really believed in Megatron, that I was just lonely, that I would’ve defected eventually had I not bit the dust, but it wouldn’t mean anything coming from a ghost,” Slipstream explained.
Windblade’s shoulders slumped. “I guess you’re right.” Then, gripped by a wild impulse, she said, “Will you touch me again?”
Slipstream didn’t reply, only bringing her fingers to Windblade’s cheek, sending waves of that prickling sensation rippling across her face.
“What do you miss most about being alive?”
“I miss flying,” Slipstream answered instantly. “I can’t transform when I’m like this. I don’t know why. I miss the wind under my wings, across my windshield. I miss being off the ground.”
“I wish you could fly,” Windblade agreed. “It doesn’t seem fair, the afterlife grounding you like this.”
Slipstream pulled her hand away, but the impressions of where it’d been remained. “My life has never been fair. Why would my afterlife be any different?” Pause. “I think I’m going to fade again soon.”
“This time was so brief.”
“I’ll be back,” Slipstream promised. It sounded like a promise, anyhow, and a gentle one.
“I want you to stay,” Windblade said to the empty air. “I don’t want you to fade at all.” Slipstream probably didn’t want to fade either. It seemed that, by now, both of them would rather she be alive, or at least hanging around permanently. She was reconsidering talking to Wheeljack about it, but not just to understand what had happened to Slipstream, but to fix her somehow. But she’d have to ask Slipstream for permission first.
It was another couple of days before Slipstream returned, tailing her as she walked down the halls. “You’re here,” Windblade noted. “Your absences are getting longer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Slipstream laughed. “That’s the first time anyone’s ever said that to me. In the Decepticons, it was always, ‘Slipstream, fix this! Slipstream, the Seekers are out of line! Slipstream, you incompetent loser! Slipstream, Starscream is acting like a fool again, rein him in!’ I was responsible for everyone’s mistakes.”
Windblade had been going to check in on Wheeljack, see what he was up to, but she swerved back down the corridor back to her room. Slipstream followed dutifully. She opened the door, allowed Slipstream through, and then closed the door behind them. She leaned up against the door and said, “I want to tell Wheeljack about you.”
Slipstream didn’t offer any visible reaction. “Okay. And?”
“I wanted to ask your permission before I did it. It’s your life. Or. Un-life, I guess.”
“Undeath.”
“Sure.”
“What’s he going to do with the information of my existence?” Slipstream asked.
“Well. I was hoping. Maybe. He could figure out a way to bring you back. Or help you stay longer. Or at the very least transform again.”
A flash of joy flickered over Slipstream’s face, disappearing as quickly as it had arrived. “You can’t promise that.”
“I can’t,” Windblade told her. “But I can promise to ask.”
“Why, though? It would be a risk, I’m sure, trying something like that. What would even happen if I came back? You don’t know that I’ve changed,” Slipstream reminded her.
“I don’t know that,” Windblade agreed. “You could shoot me and Wheeljack in the face and fly off back to your Decepticon buddies as soon as you’re back in your body. But I trust you. Or I want to. I want to at least give you the opportunity to try and be better. And it’s like you said: you can’t do that from beyond the grave.”
Slipstream sighed deeply. Her shoulders slumped outwards, and a lazy grin began to grow across her face. “Kiss me, Bird,” she said.
And Windblade did, as best she could. It was that same tingle, that same prickle, but warmer, more radiant and radiating, as their lips pressed together, pressed into one another. It was but a facsimile of a real kiss, but it was enough. Windblade could only imagine kissing Slipstream for real: wrapping her arms around her neck and pulling her downwards.
“Let’s go see Wheeljack,” Windblade said as they broke apart.
“Thank you, Windblade,” Slipstream said. “For your trust. It’s foolish, but.”
“It’s likewise necessary,” Windblade finished, leading her out the door.
Wheeljack’s lab was as cluttered as always. He was nose-deep in a datapad while simultaneously taking a soldering iron to what looked like an impossible amalgamation of scrap metal. “Windblade!” he said as she entered, looking up and grinning.
“Wheeljack,” she greeted him warmly. Slipstream was beside her, leaning against her, their shoulders intersecting. The tingling was intense and widespread. “I have an issue that I need your help with. It’s going to sound kind of strange, and you can’t tell Optimus. Not for a little while at least.”
He chuckled. “Ha! ‘Strange’ and ‘not telling Optimus’ is my MO! Whaddya need?”
Windblade felt her hand go numb from prickles as Slipstream curled her fingers around her palm. “Well. I’m being haunted by Slipstream’s ghost, and it’s not as bad as it sounds.”