The Shadow of Kaon

Upside down

With the never-ending sound of quickly typing digits on top of a keyboard, the sometimes chirping and beeping noises from the screen, and the images of different bots that popped up with each opened file in front of her, the hours Darkwing spent in front of the computer already blurred into a mess... but it was something she could at least do with the medic's restrictions.

Since Knockout eased his restrictions and finally let her leave the medbay, it seemed like the whole ship agreed to prevent her from doing anything that could have had the slightest chance of delaying her recovery. The vehicons kept her away from physical labor around the ship by hiding every task at hand, she couldn't join the miner teams even just to gather samples for testing, and Breakdown always objected when she offered to go to the training grounds with him, no matter how busy all of his other sparring partners were.

All because they thought that she was fragile.

But Darkwing was never fragile.

Her armor may have been lightweight, but it was thicker than they would think, and her clawed digits were only polished because she always kept every part of herself battle-ready, willing to kill for the cause at any given moment.

For years and years, and through countless fights, she was constantly in the first rows of battle, charging at the enemy, and she was always among the last to leave it, making sure that everybody who was still alive at the end got out too. She killed so many times that she lost count of it, and every part of her body suffered cuts, hits, and shots without exception through all these fights, serving as a reminder of what she had done for the Decepticons.

But now, without battles or anything to keep her mind occupied, these small clerk-like jobs made her feel useless. A simple, easy work, perfect for her to do something, letting her heal from her injuries without causing any relapse in the process... but no matter what, she dreaded this job with her whole being.

She hated the knowledge that the data clerks only left it to her to keep her busy from trying to help in other ways around, she hated the pitiful gazes that followed her wherever she went, whenever she sat down in the canteen or walked through the halls, and she hated the way they kept pestering her with the smallest, most insignificant tasks just to stop her from doing anything else.

'Useless. Completely useless.' The femme stared at her reflection on the dark blue screen, optics staring back without the faintest sign of light in them, being just as empty as she was for a moment... Then, as a light knock came from the side of her keyboard, she started typing again at a fast pace, not even remembering when she stopped.

"I'm fine, Soundwave." She said quietly, eyes fixated on the rows of symbols in front of her. "I was just thinking about something. Nothing important."

Seconds later, she felt a familiar, light stroke pressing down on her shoulder, but when she didn't react, the mech pulled back the slender tendril from her frame, and she only saw from the edge of her sight as he returned to his own work quickly after.

They typed on their own computers side by side, the silent mech keeping a so much faster rhythm while the femme kept stopping again and again, deleting whole paragraphs and correcting her previous mistakes before she stopped once again, helm lowering toward her hands while she let out a deep sigh.

"I... dreamed about you when I was in stasis." She uttered quietly, her whole frame wincing lightly when she heard the mech's digits stop above the keyboard too.

Darkwing felt him staring at her from under that dark visor, analyzing her stance, her every small move, attempting to find patterns in it, but her processor was too busy trying to put her thoughts into words to care about his unsettling habit.