Transformers Prime - Sparked

Nightmares

            Arcee woke up in a dead cold; she’d had that dream again, that nightmare . . . the one where she failed to hold up Cliff, and he fell into oblivion.

            “It’s just a dream, Cee, it’s just a dream,” she mumbled over and over, but it never ceased to haunt her. “You can do, Cee, you can move on,” she whispered to herself in the dark of night.

            But no matter what she said or did, the dreams never stopped. She saw his face every night, heard his voice, smelt his oil and metal mixed with fresh energon. Dark energon. And she hated every second she couldn’t get the images to go away.

            She knew she wouldn’t sleep any more tonight, so she left her room and wandered down the hall. She’d spent so many silent nights like this; alone, cold . . . devastated. She hated feeling like she had that evasive second chance to save CliffJumper, only to have it yanked away.

            “Why’d you have to go?” She asked the empty space around her. She went to the rooftop, hoping to have that little bit of comfort the symbolic pile of rocks covering her former partner’s horn gave her.

            She wished there were more of him still there. The final images she’d had of him were awful. Cliff died and he didn’t look like Cliff.

            “You wouldn’t think I’m silly, would you?” She asked the inanimate pile of rocks. She sighed, knowing there would not be a reply, though she dearly wished there would. Tailgate had been one thing, she’d loved him like a brother, but Cliff . . . they’d bonded.

            Spark-bonded. And no one else had known.

            Cliff was her partner already, and she loved him with all her spark though, at first, she hadn’t wanted to admit such a thing. It was scandalous, it was forbidden in the midst of war . . . and yet, others had found reluctant happiness in the arms of another.

            So why couldn’t she?

            She’d been out late with CliffJumper one night, scouting for energon and any Decepticons stupid enough to try and perform an ambush. It had been dead silent when they’d snuck off into the canyons and cut their com links with the base.

            “So, talk to me, Cee, what’s on your hard drive?”

            “Nothing, Cliff, I just want to get this mission over with,” she replied as she transformed. She wanted to kept her distance from this mech, but he knew her all too well.

            He pinned her to rock face of the canyon with one arm propping himself up, the other dangling freely.

            “Arcee, you can trust me,” he insisted.

            “I do trust you, Cliff.” But she looked away, not wanting to look him in the optics for fear of what he’d see there; for fear that he would never get this close to her again if he knew what she was thinking at this proximity.

            “Look at me, Cee,” he said sternly.

            She complied, reluctantly bringing her distant optics back to his soft ones. He looked at her with love, but she refused to believe it was true, refused to believe that he would, that he could, care about her that way. “Well? What do you want?” She asked, her spark beating out of her chest but refusing to let it show.

            “Why won’t you tell me you love me, Cee?”

            She stopped; she was frozen. Her spark stopped in her chest, she could feel it. “I-.”