Chapter Text
The planet they had landed for the usual bimonthly maintenance turned out to be little more than harsh desert, though it was far from sterile. Sparse metallic plants, thick-walled, spiny and thorny, greedily protected their contents of energy-rich sap, while the native lifeforms lived in burrows in the ground to escape the local sun's merciless glare, emerging only briefly to forage, hunt, and scowl at the planet's tourists—or, at the few bots that were not on the maintenance crew and had not opted to stay inside to avoid the plentiful sand, at least.
Chromedome carefully held still while Rewind stood on his roof, almost feeling bad for the small nest of flying, biting insects he had accidentally parked on top of. Despite their tenacity in trying to chase him away, they were much too small to do any damage, other than giving him a faint itch from where their legs skittered over his plating.
"Got the footage you wanted, my love?" he asked when Rewind climbed back into his cabin.
"Yep! Even got a nice little dust devil! So, where do you want to go next?" Rewind said, wiggling a bit to make himself more comfortable in the seat.
Chromedome scanned the horizon with a thoughtful hum. The Lost Light sat behind them to the east, bots everywhere around it as they worked. North and west both had countless dens dotting the ground that would make it a nightmare to navigate without having to hose bits of mechanimals out of his wheels later. The south, however, was mostly flat sand as far as his sensors reached. Possibly an old seabed from when the planet had been wetter. His tires were not that suitable for sand, but it was better than destroying his suspension trying to go over a few thousand holes in the ground. With a blast of air to empty his cabin of aggressive bugs, he shut his roof and turned towards the sandy plain.
"Making another documentary for movie night, I take it?" he asked, not making any attempt to hide the satisfied rumble of his engine as he felt Rewind nestled safe and close within himself—even though he knew he was a very cramped fit compared to many of the others' alt-modes.
"Rodimus demanded more action and explosions after the last one, so I'm getting as many extended landscape shots as I can instead," Rewind replied. "Think you can go a little faster?"
Chromedome would grin if he had a mouth to do so with, but accelerated dutifully, sand billowing up behind them. The miles quickly added up, especially when Rewind started playing cheesy love songs until Chromedome broke and had to sing along. By the time they were well into the thirteenth refrain of a Traujoran ballad, the endless horizon was broken by craggy mountains, rising as a natural wall over the field of sand. Once, it might have been the edge of a continent, now worn down by the ages after the water retreated.
He had wanted to pull off an awesome sideways drift through the sand to turn around, but instead found his wheels with far less traction than he had thought, and then way more traction than he had planned, and suddenly he had spun four times around himself and come to a full stop with one rear wheel stuck firmly in a pile of sand. Trying to drive forward only caused his tires to dig further into the powdery surface, and when he tried a sudden acceleration—hoping futilely that sheer torque could overcome the lack of traction—he ended up, much to his embarrassment, with his front wheels well off the ground and both rear wheels completely buried.
Transforming helped slightly, as it at least gave him limbs, even if it also caused his head to join his wheels in being deep into the pile of sand—and Rewind was little help, too busy hiccuping with laughter to do anything else by the time Chromedome finally pulled himself free from the grainy depths and toppled backwards onto his aft.
"Did you hurt anything?" Rewind asked between giggles, already running hands over his chassis to check for dents.
"Just my pride."
Rewind's field flared with affection. "Aw, my poor Domey," he said, pressing a soft kiss against Chromedome's chest, right above his spark.
Chromedome's engine revved in response, spitting sand out of his exhausts. "I also hurt my face," he quickly said, happily tilting his head down when Rewind obliged and moved to kiss his faceplate as well.
It was nice, being able to hold his smaller conjunx close, faceplates trailing static against each other, and almost worth the sand in his gears. It was also, it struck him, the first time in several cycles that they did not have other bots within hearing range; their only companions being the wind and the sky, He had been just about to suggest that he and Rewind found somewhere slightly less sandy when their comms pinged for the standard 'are everyone currently away from the ship still alive?' check-in, and he reluctantly let Rewind slip out of his arms to answer it.
"Hi, Captain," Rewind said, hand at his audial and visor shimmering with fondness when Chromedome exaggeratedly pouted at the loss of contact. "Domey's with me; everything is fine on our end, and we plan on being back in four to five hours. Rewind out."
"Four to five hours?" Chromedome asked, well aware that they were slightly less an hour out from the Lost Light, and automatically took Rewind's hand when he held it out. It was a reflex by now—Rewind offered a hand and Chromedome took it, just as instinctively as he would duck when Whirl threw things at his head.
"There's a lot of caves in those mountains, and I want to get some more shots in before we head back. And..." Rewind's choice dropped to as low a purr as he could manage without an engine. "It has been a while since I found out just how loud I can make you..."
Chromedome's fans immediately kicked in with a roar as he scooped Rewind into his arms and somehow managed to scramble to his feet at the same time, pressing kisses against every inch he could reach of his beloved conjunx. He caught himself with one hand when his feet slipped in the piles of sand his wipeout had kicked up, the other occupied with keeping the light of his spark close, and Rewind laughed so beautifully even as he peppered kisses over Chromedome's face that Chromedome only cared about the unstable surface enough to make sure he did not fall completely flat.
"Oh, Domey," Rewind said, pulling back, blue visor looking at him so fondly and affectionate that Chromedome wanted to erase the memory of it from his mind just so he could experience it anew. And then that affection disappeared suddenly, Rewind's field flaring with alarm, and small fingers gripped tighter where they held onto Chromedome's chassis. "Domey!"
All at once, the surrounding world snapped into focus, and Chromedome realised with a start that the sand was moving under his feet. And behind him, sand flowing into it like water to a drain, a hole gaped open like the ground itself wanted to swallow them. He threw himself forward, trusting Rewind to hold on as he kicked with hands and feet to climb out of the growing pit, the rushing sand constantly pushing him back while behind him, the hole grew larger and larger as whatever fragile ground upon which the sand had been sitting was disturbed and crumbling from the change in weight.
Escape was so close, one hand nearly at the edge of the pit, when the ground gave way entirely beneath him; in an instant nothing but empty air and falling sand. He pulled Rewind close, his chest already splitting open as he transformed, trying to fold around, to envelop and protect, that bright spark that gave him his reason to live.
Then his head struck something hard, and everything went dark.
⁂
Consciousness returned syrupy-slow.
The first thing he became aware of was the sheer amount of popups in his HUD and his chronometer claiming that it was legislator past gemini. His sensornet was screaming at him, letting him know that everything hurt, and he frantically dialled his pain receptors down to a more bearable level.
At least that meant he was alive—none of the stories of the All-spark mentioned that there was supposed to be pain—and brought up a summarised status report.
CRITICAL WARNING: Fuel line rupture detected (51)
Autorepair attempted: Auto-repair successful (45)
CRITICAL WARNING: Fuel line rupture detected (6)
WARNING: Unintegrated component detected (6)
Current fuel loss: 0.02%
Fuel: 17%
Coolant: 14%
Petrolex: 29%
Fuel pressure: 52 CpA
WARNING: Fuel pressure low
WARNING: Unintegrated component detected
WARNING: Unintegrated component detected (4)
WARNING: Unintegrated component detected (2)
WARNING: Unintegrated component detected (5)
That would explain why everything hurt, he concluded, and dismissed the rest of the warnings. Most of them were about unintegrated components anyway, which was odd, because First Aid was obsessive about making sure that any newly added component had been set to auto-integrate. At least none of the warnings were about missing limbs, so it seemed he was more or less in one piece.
Visuals finally clicked on along with the rest of his systems, and Chromedome found himself lying on his back, staring up at a dark void lit by thousands of moving lights. Not stars, unless he had hit his head a lot harder than he had thought. He could feel something against him, and, with what took a significant amount of effort and strength, managed to lift his head enough to look.
"Rewind," he croaked through his vocaliser the moment he recognised the smaller shape pressed up against him, using him as a pillow.
"Hey Domey. Welcome back to the land of the conscious," Rewind said, head turning to face him instead of the lights above; the faint glow from his optics revealing a nasty crack along the glass threatening to split his visor in two. "How're you feeling?"
He briefly brought up the status report for a quick skim and concluded that there were no extremely critical errors on it. "Like half-melted scrap after meeting a drunk Whirl," he replied, earning himself a small laugh in return. "What're those lights?"
"Native lifeforms. I call them dustbuggies. They're friendly." Rewind let go of his hand (Chromedome was not even aware that his fine motor skills were back. It really was a reflex) and held up both palms towards the dark void above.
And, as if summoned, one light split off from the larger group and fluttered down to alight on Rewind's hands; a fuzzy-looking mechanimal with an oblong body; six pairs of legs that only just managed to poke out of the massive amounts of fluff; large, soft-looking wings; and glowing brightly enough to cast shadows over the immediate area. Fern-like antenna patted at Rewind's hands before the bug turned to look at Chromedome, tiny head tilted to the side as two pairs of unblinking eyes watched him as if to see what he was doing.
But its light illuminated the half-dried energon that coated Rewind's arms, and Chromedome's fans picked up in concern at the sheer amount of energon he spotted spilled over the sand as well. He struggled up on his elbows, and his spark caught when he, for the first time, started to realise the extend of damage to himself.
Most of his waist was simply gone. Torn metal surrounded the opening into his fragile inner mechanisms, and though it, he could see glimpses of his own spinal strut beneath the wires and cables; his own pistons shifting with his weight. Bits of foreign metal—sparkling white and deep black standing out against living grey—had been welded around torn cables and connectors, holding his innards together and in place. A disturbing amount of energon had pooled around him, colouring the sand a deep purple, and dripping from where it had gathered in dents in his internals, though, thankfully, it seemed that the bleeding had stopped by now.
And Rewind, his darling, sweet conjunx, had not only suffered a damaged visor, but the fall had also cracked the side of his helmet and his camera. Both of his pauldrons were missing, and Chromedome would have sobbed if he had the energy for it when he spotted the remains of Rewind's right leg, ripped off at the upper thigh and now lying dismantled across the energon-soaked sand; its pieces pressed inside Chromedome's body to replace what he had lost. Fused with him, to keep him alive.
"Oh, my love," he whispered, reaching towards Rewind with a hand that faltered when he could not see anywhere to touch that had not already been damaged in some way or coated in enough energon that he could not tell to who it belonged.
Rewind moved the glowing bug to one hand so he could offer the other for Chromedome to hold. "I'm alright, Domey. We're both alive. That's all I care about at the moment."
⁂
Chromedome had mustered the strength to, with Rewind's help, move a few feet away—just enough that he was no longer in a puddle of his own energon—and prop himself against a large boulder. Possibly the same one that had taken out Rewind's camera, judging by the shards of glass scattered near it. Rewind was checking through the repairs he had done, re-doing welds and fixes that had been torn from Chromedome moving around. Chromedome himself kept his eyes on the large cluster of dustbuggies around them, so that he did not have to see his conjunx root around in his innards. He had done autopsies on hundreds, if not thousands of bots that had watched themselves get gutted and bleed to death... But it was something entirely different when it was his own body. So, instead, he watched the bugs.
They displayed some degree of intelligence, and had spent some time fluttering close to examine Chromedome, now that he was no longer lying still on the ground. None of them were as friendly as the one that had taken a liking to Rewind, though—Chromedome had been unable to help his fond smile when he had spotted that particular dustbuggy weaving silk over the gash in Rewind's helmet, as if trying to help out with repairs in its own way. A small group had settled down in a circle around the two bots, just out of arm's reach, watching with twitching antennae and curious eyes, checking over every tiny piece that Rewind discarded as he worked. A much larger swarm had gathered around the puddle of energon soaking into the sand, though Chromedome was slightly relieved to notice that they did not seem interested in eating it and more seemed to simply be trying to figure out what it was.
"I think I managed to reconnect your radio," Rewind said from somewhere around Chromedome's spark casing, and Chromedome concluded that it was simultaneously one of the most lovely and most terrifying sounds of his life. "Test it for me, Domey?"
His internal comms were indeed online again, and he happily started a full spectrum scan of anything he could pick up, but... "No signal," he said, feeling his finials droop when channel after channel, sequence after sequence came back blank. Not even the music channel that Blaster had set up to constantly broadcast just for cases like this was available. And, his chronometer was claiming that the time was two ouguiya to birch. "How much time's it been since we checked in?"
There was a sharp pinch inside him along with the brief smell of burnt metal, and then his HUD cleared two of the lower-priority alerts. "About six hours. Assuming they gave us an extra hour, they should launch the search party any time now."
Chromedome hummed in agreement, tilting his head back against the rock to look up at the flying bugs again. It was some comfort that the captains had a unanimous policy—possibly the only one that they had never argued over or had to bring in Ultra Magnus to be the tiebreaker on—that the Lost Light operated on a 'no bot left behind' principle. No matter how long it took to locate a lost crew member, no one ever got abandoned. The question was just if they would be found before they ran out of fuel...
"Do you ever wonder how strange it is that even here, in this new universe, we find mechanical lifeforms?" Chromedome asked without expecting much of an answer.
"Not really. Rake's Equation says that the odds of organic life surviving to the multicellular stage're low enough that any given universe'll have a much higher density of more resilient mechanical lifeforms, even if we have lower initial odds of evolving," Rewind replied, pulling his arms out, and Chromedome wanted to check him over for wounds when he noticed the fresh energon staining Rewind's hands. "Or maybe, we just happened to create a universe filled with mechanical lifeforms when we jumped."
Chromedome settled for gently tugging Rewind close until they could cuddle. "We'll have to look for an intelligent civilisation to ask," he said. tucking Rewind's head under his chin and simply held him close for now. "You could pester them to let you at their libraries."
"Oh, Domey, you know I wouldn't pester. I'd just break down the doors if they wouldn't let me in otherwise."
"No, you wouldn't, because I'd already have broken them down for you." Chromedome pressed a soft kiss to the top of Rewind's helm. "Everyone on the ship would help. You'd ride in on top of the angry mob like the cutest little warlord. Megatron'd give you pointers on being a tyrant."
Rewind made a perfect 'pfft', causing the dustbuggy on his shoulder to jolt upright and wave its antenna in alarm. "Too much work," he said. "I'd rather be an evil advisor. We can make Whirl the tyrant."
"And for aeons after, future historians will wonder how an entire planetary civilisation managed to collapse within two days," Chromedome said, and smiled when Rewind curled against him with a laugh.
⁂
The seventh hour came and went with no sign of rescue. It had been easy to fall in and out of a semi-offline state, feeling time slip between his fingers like memories once had. High above, the dustbuggies continued to swarm, though more and more of them came to rest on the ground, turning the sand around the two bots into a sea of softly glowing fluff and leaving but them and the drying pools of energon as dark islands.
It was not until he had started at that dark ceiling for well over an hour—his chronometer letting him know that it was now teenager past forwards—that something suddenly struck Chromedome, pulling his processor from its sleep-cycle and made him startle hard enough to rouse Rewind as well.
"Where's the hole we fell through?"
Rewind turned over, head tilted back against Chromedome's torso to look up as well. "I don't know," he said after a moment. "Maybe the sun's set and it's just too dark to see it?"
Unable to shake the unease crawling over his spark, Chromedome carefully transformed just enough to bring out his headlights. While Rewind fussed over him, re-checking the repairs, Chromedome flicked on his high beams and aimed them as straight upwards as he could.
And everywhere on the ceiling, glittering like the strands from a webcrawler, were the dustbuggies' fine silk; woven together to form a scaffolding holding up the sand above. The hole that he and Rewind had fallen through was gone entirely, repaired with new silk. On the surface, aided by the wind, it was probably no more than a shallow sand pit by now, waiting for another heavy bot to arrive and break the silk with their weight...
"We need to find a way out," Chromedome immediately said, transforming back to robot mode and pushing against the boulder until he could come to a wobbly stand and sending the nearest dustbuggies scrambling into the air to get away. His waist ached from the movement and from the damage, but he could remain upright and maintain his balance after a moment to let his systems adjust. In the corner of his HUD, his fuel gauge dropped to 15%. "We have to warn the others about trying to drive over the sand, or else we'll all end up trapped down here!"
"Domey, staying put is s the safest option!" Rewind protested. "The search team'll have their beacons on, so if one of them falls down here, the others will know where they went through and can come help! If we wander off into these caves, we might never get found!"
"But, if we stay..." Chromedome looked around, suddenly realising just how large the cave was. How wide the web above had been spun. How many impossible tons of sand that hung precariously above their heads. "We have to at least find somewhere that's got a solid ceiling. If someone like Ultra Magnus goes through right above us..."
"If he does, it'd be much further towards the edge," Rewind said, reaching up to pat Chromedome's thigh. "But let's look for somewhere more solid, then; I don't like seeing you this worried. Think you can carry me?"
Bending over was a deeply uncomfortable experience. He could see his own cabling bulge out of his middle without the plates to hold it in place, and he quickly pulled Rewind into his arms to avoid having to look too much down at himself. Putting weight on his left leg was painful, and he suspected that he might have damaged one of his struts; but, he could walk, and the collective medibay would probably have a fit over his state anyway, so it wouldn't matter if he did a bit more damage to his femoral supports in order to get his beloved to a safer location.
Nickel was definitely going to throw a fit. She had grown quite attached to the Lost Light's crew, and tended to cuss out everyone in the vicinity whenever someone got injured. Or just neglected their health—Rodimus had missed exactly two of his checkups before he had been dragged to the medibay by one diminutive Prionian holding his chevron in a vice-like grip and yelling at him the entire way, and she had even less patience with anyone who was not a captain.
Dustbuggies swarmed around them as he walked, lighting up the sand ahead and kept him from tripping over rocks. He was not sure how long he walked, holding Rewind close, before he spotted the first arching stone reach out from the dark; part of a larger collection of massive rocks. Perhaps it had been gathered by some gigantic creature in the ages past, or simply been part of a collapse from the continental edge above, but it was clearly solid, and, more importantly, the stones laid in such a way that it left a small entry to the well-protected centre. Chromedome was not certain if he would be able to fit, but, Rewind certainly could, and that was what mattered. There was even a small, flickering light within the hole, waving around in the same way that the dustbuggies did.
In hindsight, he should have noticed that the dustbuggies did not go near the pile of stones, and even the one Rewind had befriended abandoned them as they approached. Should have paid attention to the disturbed sand around the hole, moved in ways that the dustbuggies were far too small to manage. Should have considered how, on every planet that developed life, even mechanical ones, lifeforms would evolve for the purpose of consuming other lifeforms...
As it was, none of those thoughts crossed his mind until the sand exploded into teeth.
He threw himself backwards on instinct, vocaliser shrieking, and felt sharp teeth scrape against his chassis as he only just avoided the monster's attack.
And then everything slowed to a crawl when he realised his arms were empty. The creature, all legs and teeth and a glowing lure, already retreating into the cave with its prey.
Rewind, his world, reaching back towards him from within its jaw. Reaching for help. Reaching for him.
Chromedome felt something snap in his spark.
⁂
He was not certain what happened. Only that one moment, he saw his Rewind being dragged away, and the next, there was a voice shouting at him and his arms were soaked. His processor refused to bring up anything that had happened in the past few minutes other than that he had been in Protection Mode—and he did not even know he had anything like that installed—and his HUD gradually began filling with a myriad of errors as everything started coming back online.
Optics blinked online, and Chromedome stared in confusion at the very thoroughly smashed and extremely thoroughly dead leggy tooth creature that had been smeared over the sand in front of him. His hands and arms were caked in bits of gooey mesh and what might once have been a digestive tank, and he had, at some point, unsheathed his needles. Presumably to use as weapons, if he was to judge by how the once-fine needles had been snapped and bent.
"Rewind?" he asked, vocaliser fritzing with his worry.
"I'm here, Domey," Rewind's voice came, and Chromedome spun around to find his conjunx; nearly falling over as his surroundings kept spinning even after he stopped.
"Rewind," Chromedome said, and fell to his knees next to his beloved.
Tears and holes had joined the existing damage from where the monster's teeth had pierced through black plating, though Chromedome's hands shook too much to do much more than smear the sluggishly flowing energon. He frowned when every brush of his palms only seemed to increase the flow, the drip of energon audible in the cave, until Rewind gently tugged his hands away and he realised that it was his own fingers that were bleeding.
Not just his hands, he realised belatedly, finally paying attention to the errors in his HUD, and especially the red, critical notice informing him that he was down to 4% fuel.
Rewind's small fingers poking and pinching and pulling at him, dipping into his upper arm to... oh. Chromedome reset his optics briefly when he realised that most of the outer plating was missing. Little sparks jumped from torn wires in what had one been his left biceps. Energon roared in his audials as his systems frantically tried to preserve the fuel he had left in his lines, and suddenly the whole world tilted sideways as the rocky-sandy ground of the monster's lair jumped at his face.
A concerned blue visor swam into focus even as the rest of the world started to dim. Chromedome wanted to reach out and brush the worry out of his love's optics, but could not quite muster the strength to lift his arm. He settled, instead, for giving a long, slow blink, the way some of those small, fuzzy predators on Swearth did when they liked someone. Or at least, he tried, but his optics did not quite want to turn on again.
And then he did not think of much at all.