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1
They’d taken the time to celebrate, when the dust had settled after the Matrix heist that had passed for a success, trying to take what morale they could from what they had achieved, Orion and Ratchet and Roller and Windcharger and Glitch and Skids, feeling the ache where Senator Shockwave had filled their ranks in every look cast around.
It had been almost like a party, drinks and music in a somewhat secluded courtyard far from the rubble of the Primal Basilica, and as it wore on, and the high-grade flowed freely, inhibitions lowered, tomorrows were left to the back burner, and Glitch held out his claws to a smiling Skids for a dance, his matrix gleaming in the sunlight as the first refrains of the Empyrean Suite sailed off into the clouds, following the wind.
A few streets over, the song just barely audible, Prowl and Chromedome searched through the dark, the dank, and the rusty; dangerous parts of the city, scrap piled up in heaps, the Institute they sought lying miles beneath, unseen, unheard, and unfathomably insidious–an image of what all of Cybertron had come to look like, by the end. But this wasn’t then yet, and in the courtyard it was open and free and bright, and Roller had just poured another glass, and Skids had looked at Glitch, two warm yellow eyes meeting one wide blue one, and he had raised one claw to his face, just barely brushing it against the spot of gold on his cheek before softly pressing it to his mouth.
Later, back in his room, Glitch had set aside Towards Peace in the middle of a chapter and looked down at his claws in the crack of light spilling through the open door, something akin to grief welling inside him. I like him and I want to be like him, my hands no longer an afterthought.
2
Millions of years later, Tarn will sit alone in the snow on Messatine and remember that argument they’d had, time and time again, when Glitch had spoken a little too highly of the emerging guerilla Megatron and his Decepticon movement, and Skids had been appalled, almost horrified, at the methods he mentioned them using. “How are you endorsing this?” he’ll hear him asking, clear as the day he first had, and Tarn will grimace out an approximation of a laugh behind his mask, before he removes it, and his fingers will crush into its edges, leaving the metal crumpled slightly in their wake.
3
Losing Roller had been a blow. They’d saved the sparks from the hot spot, and launching Orion through it had pretty thoroughly disabled the sky platform, but when Roller didn’t come back–when Glitch couldn’t find him–when Pax finally relented and they’d returned to the base, fewer than they’d left it, the air was thick and heavy with the weight of it. It wasn’t like after the heist, when it had still been able to feel like a victory for a moment, despite the loss of Senator Shockwave to Primus only knew what– when futures had been assured enough to lightly disregard, to postpone for another day. These days, they were constantly on the defensive, and now, without Roller…
Skids had sat cross legged on Glitch’s berth, quietly fiddling with something in the last dregs of natural light. Neither of them could be bothered to turn one on inside. Besides, it wasn’t really dark yet. Glitch had stood, looking out the window, for a very long time, as the orange haze on the horizon faded to a dusky, bruised-looking purple-brown, and the inky black pockmarks that were all that remained of the hand of Primus stood out stark against the dust.
“Do you think this matters?” Glitch had whispered, barely audible, “All of this. Do you think it helps?”
Skids’s hands had stilled, then, the familiar tune he’d been humming under his breath fading, and he’d looked up, concern showing in the flood of yellow, door wings raised slightly, head tilted, asking without breaking the silence.
“Do you think anyone will remember us– what we do here, with Pax? Our names? Or is it–all of it–just for nothing?”
And Skids’s face had knitted up, concern and bemusement, indignation and sympathy visibly warring, and he’d half opened his mouth, but there hadn’t been any answer that would have satisfied anything to come.
4
He’d almost forgotten about him, when he’d heard the guards saying something about a new inmate– an Outlier, and the Commandant had half-idly wondered. There hadn’t been that many students at the Academy, after all. They’d said he was some kind of jack-of-all-trades, and he’d had to go see for himself. And sure enough, there he was, in the cell with the microscope, same as ever. Flashing yellow eyes, spot of gold, face open and friendly, distrusting but guileless, confused. And Tarn had almost laughed.
Skids recognized that voice, taunting from the hallway. He knew he did. But when the door of his and Quark’s cell opened, the mech that walked in was huge, all thick treads and purple biolights, with two red eyes glowing behind a Decepticon badge mask, rather than the orange and the one blue eye he’d hoped against everything for just the barest flicker of a second to see.
Tarn saw him, and he wanted to pull him apart at the seams in order to put him back together again right there on the table. He saw him and he thought about their chilly little apartment, for the first time since he’d left it, stealing out in the night to the other side of the war, a stack of shanix left on his side of the recharge slab to cover half of the next month’s rent. He saw him, and instead of anything else, instead of breaking him into more pieces than he was already in, instead of putting him back together again, he took his face in his hand, tilting it, so the golden matrix in his cheek caught the light, and he brushed his thumb over it, over the crack where it had been attached, and the red light pouring out from behind his mask intensified, cauterizing the very space between them.
And Skids was a godsend, as it were. He didn’t recognize him, but he still managed to strike up conversation whenever the Commandant felt compelled to join him in the little work room–sharing next to nothing really useful, but droll and gregarious and noble, just as insufferably noble as he had always been, and that was useful enough in itself.
It was sweet how much he trusted him by the time the work was done. Enough to think he could barter for the “release” of more prisoners when he himself was just as disposable as any of them. Enough to ask if Quark could take his place in the queue. And it was almost amusing how shocked he was, how enraged, when Tarn teleported him out of the incinerator, just in time to see how his handiwork was used, to see the fifty prisoners he’d thought he’d saved, to see his cellmate, his friend, melting alive in front of him. And Tarn watched as the faith Skids had clung to, the faith they’d debated countless times, the faith he wore on his very face shattered before his eyes, the broken horror on his face reflected back on the glass wall of the Commandant’s office, the Empyrean Suite thundering over the piece of hell in of the room below.
A million years earlier, in a one room apartment in Iacon, Skids and Glitch fall into each other, knowing without knowing how it would all end, and they make the most of what warmth remains in the world.
5
The losses got more frequent. Piling up, outside the walls they built for themselves. Bumper. Fastback. More and more friends, colleagues, and allies fell, and the true scope of the war loomed heavy and dark on the horizon.
There was no breaking point to hit, not really. Pax, mentor, friend became the Prime. Windcharger followed him around the world and then across the galaxy and back. Trailbreaker… was Trailbreaker, and he only got worse, harder and harder to keep in touch with. Everyone else was gone, and time, like the wooden hull of a ship, creaked with each day, month, year, that passed, water leaking in through the boards as it did. And Skids found Glitch between the cracks, and Glitch found what camaraderie was left for him to have.
It wasn’t good, but it was nice– not the same, and it didn’t really help–didn’t mitigate the heaviness of the atmosphere or the unease gripping the world, and when they looked at each other, the ghosts weren’t quite as friendly as they ached for them to be, but for a while, they had each other, and it was enough.
6
Their orbits pulled them closer and closer together, stretching a bridge across the gap in their ideals, until they shared a dingy little place near Trion Square. They reached for each other, and found the fraying rope still strong enough to bear the weight of them both.
And that’s where Glitch started up communications with a new mentor. That’s where he began following the ‘cult of personality’, and where the ends began to justify the means in ways Skids could never begin to accept, and it was where everything ended, though nobody would see it until long after it was dead.
Nothing really changed, not for a while, but they both knew it couldn’t last. The rift widened, and each new reconciliation grew harder and harder as life droned inexorably onwards.
And when Glitch held out his hand and hummed the Empyrean Suite for them to dance to, alone in the cold of their room, it wormed its way between his plates, unsettling to his very frame, like it was curdling something in his spark.
But Skids took it anyway. After all, why shouldn’t he? The world was on the verge of collapse. One more dance on the edge of the end of the world wouldn’t kill him.
7
Years passed. And years, and years. The war in its whole: beginning, middle, and end. Glitch had disappeared, barely after the fighting started, and Skids had gone on. Simanzi. Grindcore. The Diplomatic Corps. Prowl’s Special Ops. Chopper. Tyrest. Getaway.
Skids forgot it all, and he went on. He wondered, of course, who he’d left behind, if there’d been anyone to leave behind, and he wondered if he should miss them, but he was alive, and with every day that passed, with all the new family he made–Swerve and Rung, Nautica, Brainstorm, Nightbeat and Lotty–he began to accept that maybe this would be enough, lively nights at the bar, the slow recovery sessions with Rung, the dancing, the tomfoolery. It was comfortable, easy, good and nice.
And he was alive, in a way he couldn’t remember being before.
The Empyrean Suite sounded over the fields of the Necroworld. And suddenly Skids felt like he was falling.
It was very, very warm.