Wild Ride (Cyberverse Mech!reader X Hot Rod)

5: Attachment

After a training session with Windblade, I found myself falling back into a habit I used to do back on Cybertron.  Each evening, I'd sit under the stars and watch them go by above, and I'd allow myself to silently meditate. Hot Rod noticed this pattern in my behavior and, one evening, decided to follow me.

"Y/D?" He asked curiously. I looked over to him and gave him a small smile. "What are you doing out here?"

"Stargazing. Care to join me?" I asked. Hot Rod sat next to me and gave me a confused look.

"Why are you looking at a bunch of stars?" He asked.

"It's a habit, i guess." I said quietly as I returned my gaze above. "Something I developed a long time ago."

"Any particular reason?"

"They are just really pretty to me. Like... shattered glass spread over ebony velvet. Sometimes, I'd get so lost in them that I forget to return to myself." My expression drifted to a sort of sadness as I spoke. "I guess I secretly hope that maybe, just maybe, one of those stars is my carrier." I then gently looked over to Hot Rod, who was strangely attentive for once. "Do you believe in an afterlife?"

"Honestly? I don't know. Never was a spiritual type."

"There's an old Vosian story that says that if a flyer remains true to the skies, their spark becomes a star. A sort of imortalization by Primus. It's why a lot of seekers are rather prideful for their ability to fly."

"Yet you aren't."

"I was never one for such behaviors."

"Wouldn't have guessed in all truth. Well, at least what the Autobots knew of you in that regard."

"I'm not surprised." I said with a gentle smile. "But... I hope I become worthy of the Autobots and can amend the damage I've done."

"I mean, most of us like you, Y/D. You're strong, gentle, and honest. Even during battles back on Cybertron, and when you were taking out specific targets, you fought with honor and fairness. You never attacked a defenseless bot or left one to die. Primus, you saved a lot of us on more than one occasion, but no one ever knew." Hot Rod then gently placed his and on mine, and I saw a tinge of blue cross his face.

"I did what I had to. It would not have been a fair fight to take out defenseless opponents." I said as I tried to contain my flustered feelings inside. "But... I'm still not innocent."

"But you aren't a monster either." Hot Rod said, blue now attacking my own face now at his words and the fact that he was closer to me. "Monsters have no honor, no morality, no thought. If you were a monster, you'd have left me in that fire. You'd have killed the defenseless and the weak." He then took my hands in his, and I felt my spark pound loudly in my chassis. "You wouldn't be trying to redeem yourself."

I didn't know how to react to his words, so I did the only thing I knew how. I flung my arms around the smaller bot and pulled him into a hug, startling the young bot at first, but he returned it.

"Thank you for not giving up on me." I said quietly as I released him. We then moth sat quietly and watched as a shooting star passed overhead. Internally, I made a wish, one that I know would never come true, but I wanted to.

'I wish that there would be peace between Autobots and Decepticons.' I thought to myself.

"We should head back inside. It's getting late." Hot Rod said. I nodded, and we both returned to the ship and headed towards the habsuites. I escorted Hot Rod to his before heading towards mine, my mind pondering what the younger bot had said. My thoughts then drifted to the gentle touch he made, and my spark practically jumped out of my chassis again.

'No, no, you can't get attached.' I thought to myself as I entered my habsuite. 'Attatchment is weakness... right?' I then laid down on my berth and stared up at the ceiling with furrowed optic ridges. 'That's what sire always told me. But... I'm not following what he says anymore. I'm not a Decepticon. But... what if I hurt him? What if... I lose him?' I then rolled to my side and curled up on the berth with a puzzled and hesitantly expression as my thoughts continued to spiral. 'It won't happen. I have to put up that barrier so he won't get hurt. I refuse to he the cause of another Autobot death.'

Eventually, I went into recharge, but my dreams were not pleasant, which wasn't unusual for me. What was unusual was the content of my dream.

In my dream, I was back in that strange void I saw when I first discovered my powers, the twisting and winding of color against the black hypnotically dancing all around me. I then saw my spark drift past my face and slowly glide about in the void. The dream then shifted to the ruins of Cybertron, where some creature with multiple faces stared down at me with intense and judging eyes. Long tendrils reached for me, and I stepped back in fear. Then it spoke.

"Anomaly. Guilty." It said in many voices. The ground below shook and broke apart in chunks, my frame tumbling down a long dark tunnel and into some sort of thick black ooze. I struggled in the fluid while crying out for help. The only one to answer were a pair of blades that drove themselves into my optics. I screamed in agony, and I sunk deeper and deeper into the black ooze, my vision going completely black.

Outside of my dream, I swas twitching and muttering in my recharge, condensation forming tiny droplets all across my frame as jerked about.

"No... no, no, no. Pleae.... someone... no... NO!" I shot up with rapid vents and wide optics, my wings trembling wildly on my back as I looked around to see I was still in my habsuite and not in some sort of pit.

"Y/D?" I heard Hot Rod say from outside my habsuite room, the door slowly opening to reveal the concerned bot. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah... just a nightmare. Nothing to concern yourself with." I said as I wiped away the condensation and forced myself to calm down. I checked the clock and saw it was around 3 in the morning earth time.

"You've been getting those a lot." He said as he entered and sat on the berth next to me. "I know I can't make you talk about it, but I'm here if you need anything."

"Don't worry about me. But why are you awake?" I asked in an effort to change the subject.

"Couldn't recharge. I was going to go do my patrol early, but I got worried when I heard you yell. Are you sure you're okay?"

"I will be. If um, if you don't mind, I'd like to join you on that early morning patrol. It may help me clear my mind."

"Yeah, sure! If you can, keep up." He said with an adorable cocktail grin.

"Is that a challenge?" I chuckled in amusement.

"Well, it might as well be."

"You're on."

When we returned from the uneventful patrol, I decided to wander the ship a little to try and get myself to relax enough to recharge. Somehow, I ended up in the cargo hold of the ship, and I plunked down on the floor with my back against the cold metal walls. I took out my blades and repetitively sharpened them, eventually deciding to detach them from my arms and lay them on my lap for a better angle. Slowly but surely, I eventually dozed back off into recharge like a battleworn soldier out in a wasteland after facing down thousands of foes.