Chapter Text
"You okay?"
"Nah." Whirl tilts his helm down, focusing on Tailgate's purple-shadowed ghost as much as he focuses on anything these days. The answer is honest; there's no point in lying to the dead. Whirl's got a can of phos in his claw so it must be that time, whatever that time is, the time when he slips a little data slug of hopes and dreams into the trash where it belongs. Tailgate, legs, little guy, brave soul. Little white hands curling around his empty claw, tugging gently until he figures out it means 'follow' just as surely as Four's turned back does.
"Bad day," legs tells the shadow, and don't they make a sad little procession down the hall. Ghosts and ghosts and more ghosts. He hums softly to himself, since Four isn't there, a bright lilting tune turned dirge because his vocalizer only makes three notes. It's funny. The new one, a Cyclonus, whatever that is, hums with him. It's... nice. Something like nice. Little white hand curled around his and a voice carrying the tune Whirl can't.
The hallway isn't right, isn't the Cog, isn't the end of the line where Whirl will die, but none of this is right. It isn't right that they walk into a room and Whirl is already in it, it isn't right that Tailgate is here, it isn't right that Whirl is the one who gets to live.
He thinks he said that part out loud.
They know better than to look at him, these ghosts, they know that Tailgate is the only one who can touch him. He knows enough now too, enough to have His Corner where he goes with Tailgate, pulls the little disposal into his arms and curls around him, staring down Cyclonus and Whirl and Orion and anyone else who fades in or out or sideways.
"I hate this," Whirl says, and he doesn't know which of them said it.