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"And, you know, I was planning t' go in through the south vent instead since I haven't actually seen any guards patrolling it too often—"
"Pax…"
"I-I might even get Jazz this time! You and I both know how stealthy he is, I know I joke around about it a lot but he really does seem to have a knack for sneaking around—"
"Pax."
"Listen, I need to go, alright? KDK-1's downtime isn't gonna last forever and there's only so much time before—"
"Orion!" D-16 interrupted. He held Orion by his shoulder pauldrons, keeping him in place. "Stop. Just… just, stop, okay?"
Orion faltered. "Okay."
D-16 took a good, long, look at him. Orion resisted the urge to pull away from the scrutiny, but the silence didn't last long.
"Why?" Asked D-16.
"Why, what?" Asked Orion, in turn.
D-16 seemed to struggle for a moment. "Why do you always… why do you always put your life at risk, like that?"
"What?" Orion tried to rear back, startled. "I don't!"
D-16's grip on his pauldrons tightened. "You do," he insisted. "Every, single, day! You go off on your own, without a plan, and nearly die somewhere and then afterwards I have to sit here and smile and pretend it's not freaking me out that my best friend nearly died and that he's laughing about it!"
"Alright, Dee, look," Orion placed his own grip around D-16's arm gauntlets, and tried to sound as genuinely reassuring as he could, "I'm fine, see? I'm sorry I keep scaring you, I didn't… I didn't know you felt that way, I just wanted to tell you about stuff that happens whenever I go out. You don't have to worry, alright? I'm reckless, but, I'm still alive aren't I? I really didn't mean to upset you, I'll stop telling you about the—ow, ow, ow ow ow!"
"Sorry!" D-16 cursed, and immediately loosened his hold on Orion. Orion glanced down at his left shoulder pauldron, and whistled. There were visible indentations where D-16's digits had pressed on beforehand. "Wow," he said, lightly, "didn't know you were that strong, dude."
D-16 made a strangled noise. "See, that's exactly what I'm talking about! Orion, I nearly compressed your armor into your protoform! Why aren't you more concerned about that?!"
Orion gave a half sparked shrug. "You're my friend," he explained plainly.
"But I still hurt you."
"But you're still my friend?"
"But I still hurt you."
Orion pressed his lips into a thin line. "Agree to disagree, then."
D-16 looked exasperated. "There is no agree to disagree! There shouldn't be a disagree! I'm your friend, yeah, but I still hurt you!"
"Alright." Orion agreed easily, slipping out of D-16's slackened grip. "Fine. You hurt me and I forgive you. Good talk, gotta go."
"Wh—no! No, no!" D-16 made a move to grab Orion, which he expertly dodged. He was so freaking cool. "Quit evading, Pax!"
Orion held up his hands, smiling guilelessly. "What? You expect me to just, stand in place when you're trying to scuff my frame again? I don't think so." D-16's face fell, guilty, and Orion sobered up immediately. "Sorry. Bad joke."
D-16 showed no sign of acknowledging his apology, and instead looked at him pleadingly. "Come on, man. Please, just answer me. I want to know what's going on with you."
"Nothing's going on."
"Then you don't have anything to hide."
D-16, Orion grumbled internally, you are one stubborn slagger. "You… you asked me why I did, this," he began begrudgingly, emphasizing his last phrase using air quotes, "and it's nothing new. I've told you countless times before. I look for clues to help Sentinel find the Matrix of Leadership. It's everyone. It's for us."
D-16 only stared at him impassively. "And you've been doing this for how long?"
Orion bit the inside of his cheek. "Thirty cycles…"
"Right." Said D-16. "And how large are the Archives?"
Orion frowned. "I really don't see the point of this line of questioning."
D-16 knocked him lightly on the helm. "Man, if you would just wait a klik and be patient…"
"Ow." Orion grumbled and rubbed the spot where D-16 had inflicted horrible, horrible pain upon. "Fine, fine. The vaults aren't actually that large. They're divided by multiple sectors but, they feel really small once you get used to navigating them."
D-16 nodded. "Does anything new get filed away in the vaults?"
"… No," Orion admitted. "All the archivists disappeared shortly after the death of the Primes, and Sentinel doesn't exactly make use of the vaults. I'm pretty sure that the only reason those objects move around is because of me."
"So," drawled D-16, "you've been searching the same vaults for cycles, knowing that they've been essentially closed down and nothing new will be archived for an indefinite period of time, and you still spend your days sending yourself on these—these suicide missions."
Orion shifted his weight. "Well, you don't gotta put it that way…"
"What other way is there?!" D-16 threw his arms up. "Thirty cycles of you sneaking into the same place, looking for the same thing, and you haven't found a single clue. Not one. How is that not driving you insane? Why is that worth the risk of you dying? Why even bother going, when you know there's nothing else in there?!"
Orion felt a wave of nausea wash over him. Why even bother, when there's nothing else? "I mean," he said weakly, quickly shooing that thought away. "It's fine that there's nothing new? I… sometimes I just go in there to have a look around."
D-16 rubbed a hand over his face. "I don't get you." He spat. "That's what you risk getting killed over? Are you just—lying to me? Am I just not understanding good enough? None of what you say actually answers my question. You know that, right?"
Orion opened his mouth, and closed it, unsure of what to say. He looked down at his pedes. The scuffed plating was suddenly very incredibly interesting to look at.
"Right." D-16 said. Most of the anger had bled from his tone, to Orion's relief. "Pax, do you even know why you go anymore?"
"Of course I do—"
"It sure doesn't sound like it."
Orion felt vaguely irritated, now. "I'm trying to answer, but it feels like I can't actually tell you anything because you won't believe me! My words won't matter if you've already given yourself a predisposed answer! What if it's really not that deep, and you're digging for explanations I can't give you?!"
"Just 'cause you can't give me an answer doesn't mean it's not that deep." D-16 retorted. "Can you really blame me when you tell me, to my face, that you risking your life isn't that deep? How are you not hearing yourself?!"
"We're miners, Dee!" Orion laughed in disbelief. "We could die at any point, from low energon levels, to being crushed in a collapsing cave. What's one more risk?"
D-16 stared at him long enough that Orion began to feel oddly self-conscious. "Do you really believe that. Do you really believe that the things you do to threaten your life are just. One more risk."
"I…" Orion's flare of anger had quickly been extinguished. "That's, that's not what I said."
D-16 crossed his arms. "You know how dangerous these escapades are. You've scoured throughout the entire archives and found, nothing. You agree that the chances you'll find anything new are little to none."
"Yeah."
"So why doesn't any of that," D-16 jabbed a digit towards Orion's chassis. "Make you stop?"
Orion felt his spark crackle wildly. It felt like his processor was moving faster than his mouth could speak. "I just, can't, alright?"
"Why???" D-16 asked desperately.
Orion's optics flickered for a moment. "I… it's… genuinely, what do you want me to say, Dee?" He laughed shortly. "That I like it? That I—that I need it?"
"Even if it kills you?" D-16 countered. "Even if you could die?!"
"If I stop going, I die!" Orion burst out, shoving him backward. When did he start shaking? "If it turns out that I'm not allowed to continue the one thing that keeps me going, I die! I'd rather be stupid and—and delusional and chase after something that isn't actually achievable, so that I never have to see the end of myself. I have to keep going, and it's either this, or nothing else."
The both of them stared at each other in silence. Orion felt sick with adrenaline, even if he hadn't been doing anything. He took a shaky breath. "I'm fine. I've always been fine. I'm still alive, so it's working. It doesn't need to be any more complicated than that."
To Orion's alarm, D-16 swiped an angry fist across his own face. He was… crying? "I watch you, Pax." D-16 choked out. "I see you vault over the train and I think, one of these days, he's not gonna make it. And you know what the worst part of that is? I don't think you'd even be upset about it."
"You're wrong." Once the words left Orion's mouth, it felt as though he didn't actually say anything at all. "Don't say that. Dee, please. Don't say that, you're wrong."
"Am I?"
"That's not," Orion's words caught up in his vox. He tried again. "That's not true. I, if,—the entire reason why I even—I wouldn't—I…"
Orion trailed off. His cooling fans kicked on, whirring loudly. What was… what was he even saying? What was he doing? "I…"
D-16's right, he thought, hollow. The rush of all those near-misses were the only thing that made him feel, anything. He'd rather feel the burn of his frame and experience a hundred processer alerts warning that he was running on emergency energon reserves, the terror of a close call and the pain of any impact than feel nothing at all.
He felt D-16's servo on his gauntlet, and Orion looked up at him with blurry vision. "I'm sorry," he said, voice cracking. "I didn't—I just thought…"
"Do you hear yourself, now?" D-16 asked, though it lacked the frustration that he had said it with a few moments ago. Up close like this, Orion could see the streaks of coolant tracking down his angled face. "Do you hear what you've been saying? You're my—you're everything to me and you've been killing yourself slowly every single day and I never—I should've—"
"Hey, hey, no." Orion held D-16's helm in his servos. "No, Dee, look at me, that's not on you. That's not… that's me. That's all me. It's my fault, I didn't want you to…"
"To what? To worry? To care about you?" At this, Orion flinched. D-16 made a strangled half-laugh and half-sob. "You think I don't already? Do you think I've been by your side without—" He cut himself off, sniffling. "I can't do this. I can't keep watching you destroy yourself anymore, and pretend everything's fine. I can't."
"Then what do you want me to do?" Orion's voice broke on the last word. "Tell me what to do. I'll do it. I'll—I don't know how to stop. I don't know what's wrong with me."
D-16 pulled him forward and gently knocked the bands of their forehelms together. Their optics met, both filled with coolant, and close enough that Orion could see every flicker of light in the other's gaze.
"You stay." D-16 said fiercely. "You stay here, with me, and you let me help you figure it out. You don't run off to those God-forsaken vaults tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that. You stay and we talk and we—we find a way through this. Together."
Orion's breath hitched. "I don't—I…" The thought of not being able to go, of being restricted to these barracks for an indefinite amount of time, made him feel hopeless. "I don't know if I can—"
"Can you try?" D-16 pleaded. "For me? Just, try?"
For a moment, Orion only looked at him. And then hesitantly, Orion nodded. "Okay," he whispered. "Okay. For you, I'll try."
D-16 let out a shuddering sob, and pulled Orion into a full embrace, crushing him close, but taking care so as not to press on the damaged areas of his pauldrons. Orion went willingly, burying his face into D-16's shoulder. "Thank you," D-16 said. "God—don't go anywhere. Please, stay."
Orion obliged. They stood there holding each other for a long, long while.