Chapter Text
He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep.
His whole body is aching, plating bent in places that prevented it from flaring like it wanted to, his fans trying and failing to redirect the airflow. He groans as he pushes himself up, relieving some of the restriction on his plating and shuddering as heat is finally able to be flushed out of his systems.
He blinks slowly, optics casting a visible yellow glow on the floor in front of him, though it’s not enough to throw off his sensors. His shutters blow wide, the dark room becoming clearer as he lets his optics adjust. The room is large enough that the open space begins to make him uncomfortable, plating pulling back in tight to protect his internals as he surveys his surroundings.
He cants his head, nasal ridge tipped up to smell the room for potential dangers. He opens his mouth and sucks in air through his intake, letting it settle on his glossa.
Still nothing.
Still alone.
He doesn’t like that.
He shakes himself, huffing dust out from his vents and rising to his pedes. He blinks in surprise when he feels a strange tugging sensation at his lower back and he twists around, lips instinctively pulling back over his dentae as he hisses, but there’s no one behind him.
He narrows his optics in suspicion, before realizing the sensation never stopped and there is still something tugging at his lower back. He reaches back with a servo, grabbing onto something cylindrical that fits into his palm, only to freeze when he realizes that it’s part of him. He looks down, slowly pulling the appendage into his view.
It’s long and cord-shaped, but instead of the softer metal and pliable mesh of cording, it’s rigid and segmented. It takes him another moment to fully grasp that he controls the segmented cable, slowly releasing it from his grip and watching in fascination as the cable stiffens and holds its position, feeling the feedback of the action’s strain as if it were just one of his arms.
He moves the cables experimentally, letting out a sound of surprise when he finds another cable, and then another, and then —
He shakes himself again, rolling his shoulders and letting the cables settle loosely against his back, oddly comforted by the soft clink of their segments against his plating.
He looks around the room, scenting the room again and grimacing when he still doesn’t catch anything with his sensors.
He’s alone, and it feels wrong.
A crack of light is visible just across the room though, and he swiftly makes his way towards it, shutters contracting to account for the increase in light the closer he gets. It’s some kind of gash in the wall of the room, he thinks, large enough for him to fit through if he pulls the metal back just a bit —
The damaged part of the wall comes away easily and he finds himself set further on edge at the realization of just how vulnerable his position had been. He could’ve been attacked while he was unconscious. Perhaps he’d been injured when he’d fallen asleep? Although he didn’t feel injured, just a bit sore. Achy.
He steps out of the room, squinting against the light and frowning around at the tunnel —no, the hallway —he’s found himself in. It’s brighter out here, light pouring out from indents in the roof above, but it’s not so bright as to hurt his optics.
The air is fresher too, and finally he can smell the trace of someone else on his glossa.
There’s more than one scent, like a few people have come through here, and there’s also another scent, one that makes his tanks lurch and coil like he’s eaten something unpleasant. It’s unappetizing, but the scent does make him suddenly aware of the faint sting of hunger radiating up from his abdomen.
He’s about to start following the scent when movement at the far end of the hallway catches his optic and he whirls, frame tensing in preparation for an attack.
He’s met with the gazes of two yellow visors, the mechs they belong to already tensed in their own crouches, as if expecting him to attack them first. The larger of the two is in front, their dentae subtly bared and the cables spilling from their back arched up behind them in a threat display.
He mimics them —he’s bigger, if they choose to fight him, he has the weight advantage —and arches his own cables, baring his dentae and letting out a threatening rumble, warning them against attacking.
The smaller of the pair shrinks back, ducking their head and pulling their cables in, but it takes another growl before the other relents.
He loosens out of his crouch, optics focused on the pair as he approaches them slowly. There’s something in his processor that’s telling him this is the right move, that he shouldn’t have to fight them, that they should be…
He pauses, only a pace or so from them.
He crouches again, leaning forward to bump helms with the larger of the pair. The mech reciprocates, warbling a soft growl in return and briefly tangling their cables with his. He repeats the display with the other mech too, taking the time to memorize their scents in his mental database.
They aren’t enemies, they’re…
… packmates.
Their little pack finally makes it down to where the scents all converge, the surprise and tension at seeing so many more mecha in the large room forgotten as soon as they see what everyone else is gathered around.
Hoist —he’s begun to slowly put names to himself and the others —puts himself between his pack and the other mecha as they approach the edge of the crowd, his own wariness reflected by the mecha who shift and softly hiss at his pack’s presence. They aren’t hisses of hostility though, only of surprise and greeting. Jackpot is at Hoist’s side now, warbling a note of curiosity at the other mecha and stepping closer to investigate, but never far enough to leave Mainframe unguarded.
Hoist looks past the crowd —he’s on the taller side it appears, giving him a better view —and sees that they’ve made a clearing in the center of the room, giving the mechs circling each other in the middle space to move.
The bigger one —bigger than Hoist by a fair margin —has a tri-pronged helm and faintly orange plating, his golden optics blazing as he postures, cables arching up behind him in display.
The other is significantly smaller, his frame lithe and long-legged, nothing like his bulky opponent.
Jackpot brushes cables with Hoist, field prodding at his. Hoist makes a soft noise of agreement; the fight seems terribly unfair.
It’s clearly a fight over dominance, but the bigger mech is heavier and stronger, cables lashing about in a threat. Even still, the other one doesn’t back down; he continues the slow circling, his own cables snapping like whips in reply, but he’s completely silent. He doesn’t seem fazed by how outclassed he is.
The bigger mech snarls, cable shooting out to score the smaller one’s plating, letting him know that confidence alone won’t make him back down —
A ripple of surprise makes its way through the crowd as the smaller rival deftly avoids the attack.
Hoist barely has time to process that before the smaller rival has slipped underneath the bigger one’s cables and tackled him, using his own cables to knock him off balance. The crash echoes through the room as the bigger mech hits the floor, everything happening so fast that he’s unable to even move before his smaller rival has his fangs at his throat, cables arching back in threat.
A hush falls over the room.
The loser of the fight relents, helm tilting upwards to bare more of his throat in submission.
The victor releases him and rears back, cables snapping as he looks out at the crowd. His optics —or optic, singular? It’s hard to tell, but his right optic is covered in a strange sickly greenish-blue glow —are sharp, fangs bared in a clear challenge. His plating flares out, biolights glinting off the clear breastplate over his chassis, which remains completely unscratched.
No one steps up to challenge him.
The victor’s cables snap and crack for another moment before he’s tossing his helm back and letting out a piercing shriek, biolights bright in victory.
The rest of the crowd —the pack —responds in kind, howling and yipping wildly in celebration and recognition; they are a pack, and now they have an Alpha.
They’re hungry.
It was easier to ignore earlier, when they and the rest of the pack had still been buzzing from the excitement of the fight, but after the Alpha had scented the last of them —sunk his fangs into their scruff of their neck and rasped his glossa over their protoform —and now that they’ve mostly settled, the distinct discomfort of hunger has becoming glaringly apparent.
Mainframe and Jackpot have joined a group of a few others now and have settled in a corner of the room, using what loose metals and meshes they can find to pad out a nesting area, and Hoist is comfortable enough to leave them be for now. They’ll be safe there, and Hoist needs to find fuel for them.
He’s halfway to the exit he came through when a packmate’s cables brush his. Hoist turns, making a soft sound of inquisition, cordially twining cables with the other mech. This packmate is of a similar shade of green as Hoist, although his is a bit darker, and he’s a fair few heads shorter than Hoist and not quite as broad.
He chuffs at Hoist, nasal ridge twitching and his cables brushing his abdomen.
Hungry.
Hoist makes a noise of affirmation and indicates the exit; he’d welcome the company if his packmate wished to join him in searching for fuel. He receives another chuff in reply, and they both set off out the exit.
It’s been a little over forty sleep cycles since the Awakening. The Den feels much more like a proper home than the cold empty space it had been, the nesting area padded with the softest materials they’ve been able to scavenge, structures supported by the armatures of the prey they’ve managed to haul back.
No live prey. Only greyed frames.
No sparks.
The Alpha lets out a low hiss, the hunger for plasma clawing at his throat. They need to find fresh prey; lukewarm energon and stiff mesh will only last them for so long, especially since prey is becoming more and more scarce the more they scavenge.
He tilts his helm up, feeling the familiar burn in his throat, that sense that prey wanders somewhere above them, somewhere they haven’t been able to get to.
He runs his glossa along his fangs; he will be the one the hunt first, to sink his dentae into the warm frame of terrified prey and drag them back to the Den. He will provide for his pack, whatever the cost.
A low warble sounds off to his left and a cable coils loosely around one of his own, drawing his attention back to the small grouping of his packmates that are feeding with him. The one whose cable coils with his is one of the larger mechs —and one of the later additions to the pack, if he recalls correctly —the one with the hooks and the greenish plating.
The Alpha leans forward to press their foreheads together, his agitated hiss replaced by a much more contented purr. Despite his position as Alpha, he tends to spend most of his time alone, scouting their surroundings, hunting for better prey. The pack’s wellbeing is his responsibility, after all. But downtime like this, sharing strips of cording with his packmates, is a simple pleasure that he couldn’t bear to give up.
Another one of his packmates, this one pale silver-blue and slender, tears a portion of mesh and cording from their prey, dark oil still dripping from the metal. The mech’s rotors softly whirr as he uses both his fangs and his claws to manipulate his prize, offering part of the slick fuel to his Alpha.
They eat together, they sleep together, they hunt together.
They’re nearly finished with their meal, their prey reduced nearly to the armature, when there’s a clamor near one of the exits from the Den.
The Alpha is instantly on his pedes, energon and oil still staining his lips, his cables snapping in agitation as he darts towards the commotion. Several of his packmates join him, those that are better equipped to fight, but he makes sure that he’s in the front. His shutters constrict, the hallway twisting off from the Den illuminated unpleasantly with more of those indent lights —they’d destroyed the ones in the Den, bathing it in soothing darkness —but he doesn’t shy away.
There is little he fears.
Something flashes in his processor —red optics, horrible grin, the wide gaping maw of some massive cavern—
He shakes himself, tilting his nasal ridge up and sucking in air through his intake, trying to catch any new scents. There’s something new in the air, something that makes his cables click in anticipation.
There’s another moment, before —
A new mech, not one of their pack, drops down from a gash in the ceiling of the hallway, red and yellow plating gleaming vividly against the bland grey walls. His cables tuck low against his back and he ducks his helm as the Alpha approaches him; he may not be of their pack, but he clearly is smart enough to recognize and defer to an alpha.
The Alpha circles him slowly, nasal ridge twitching as he scents something on the newcomer, something that makes his throat burn.
Prey.
He moves faster than the newcomer can react, pinning his cables and hissing in warning as he presses his nasal ridge against the mech’s neck, soaking in the scent of live prey that clings to his metal. His engine rumbles and hunger claws at his tanks.
The newcomer whines, panting through his intake and puffing air out of his vents. His finials cant backwards, his cables twitching near the clawed ends.
The Alpha jerks back, optic wide as he stares at the other mech, confusion and irritation mixing together in his field.
Mate?
He hisses in accusation, cables pulling away to arch again, returning to his slow circle. The newcomer repeats his whine, lip curling back over his fangs in a pleading pant, cables lashing more frantically. The newcomer’s mate is a prey-creature.
The Alpha narrows his optic, growling and leaning down to bare his dentae in front of the newcomer’s visor.
This newcomer dares to encroach on their territory, smelling of prey, and expects them to spare the prey-creature solely because the newcomer has mated with it?
The Alpha’s packmates shift behind him, a rumble of deliberation rippling through them. They’re all hungry, and while one spark won’t feed many of them, a fresh frame is still a better meal than the ones they’ve scavenged. It’s almost amusing that this newcomer thinks their meager addition to the pack is enough to keep them from hunting the prey.
The newcomer meets the Alpha’s gaze, drawing himself up in subtle challenge. He’s clearly attached to this prey-creature he’s taken as a mate, enough that he’ll defend it from the pack. His cables snap and lash behind him, the movement remaining below the line of his waist as he continues to show mild submission, but the intensity of the action belies his frustration.
The newcomer tilts his head, jutting his jaw and chassis out and flaring his vents, splaying a servo over his chest and another on his abdomen, his optics bright behind his visor. Insistent.
The Alpha’s nasal ridge twitches and he leans back in, rumbling a questioning growl.
The newcomer whines in an affirmative.
There’s a palpable shift in the group.
The Alpha stares at the newcomer, trying to find any hint of dishonesty in his gaze. There is none. He’s telling the truth.
His prey-creature mate has a viable forge.
…thirty-nine standard solar-cycles earlier…
Getaway’s sitting on the bridge, alone, hunched over in the command chair with his face in his servos. Cyberutopia was a lie. The Rod Squad was gone, probably dead. His best friend —his amica —is still locked in his office, maybe still unconscious.
Or dead, a cruel little voice says inside his processor, you never checked after you left. Atomizer might have died in there, and you’d be none the wiser. Some captain you are.
Getaway closes his optics, squeezing them tightly.
You were never going to be Prime anyway, the little voice continues snidely, Primes protect, Primes lead; all you’ve done is kill and maim.
Getaway forces himself up out of the chair, stomping off the bridge and back into the wide hall that leads off of it. The Officer’s Quarters are on this floor; maybe a quick nap will set his processor to rights. He rubs a servo over his face as he walks the silent hall, shoving down the loneliness trying to crawl up his throat. It’s stupid to whine about it now. This is what he wanted, wasn’t it? The Lost Light to himself?
Getaway clenches his jaw as he punches in the security code to his habsuite — Rodimus’s old habsuite —and huffs air out of his cheek vents.
He didn’t want to be alone. He’d wanted to be in charge. He’d wanted the crew’s respect.
Now the crew was dead.
Or as good as; Getaway didn’t pay attention to what Scorponok had done to them, just knew that whatever it was —or is, if they’re still alive —it’s down on the lower decks, the ones that have been sealed off. And Getaway’s not interested enough to check the camera feeds linked to the security monitors.
The door to his habsuite opens and he steps in, rubbing his faceplate again. He really should step into the washracks for a bit, if only just to let the warm solvent sink into his cording and ease his frame’s tension, but he doesn’t have the motivation.
Getaway just walks over to his berth, sighing in annoyance when he finds the soft meshes that cushion it all bunched up in weird ways —
Getaway freezes.
He’d lazily folded the meshes before he’d left the habsuite that morning and he hadn’t been back at all since.
How…how did the meshes get into this position?
If he were less tired he might feel a bit more panicked, but as it is, the only reaction Getaway can muster is furrowing his brow and turning slightly to look around the room for the perpetrator.
Had he just forgotten?
He glances down at his hip, unholstering his nudge gun and flicking out the cylinder to check how many charges were loaded —still twenty-five, just like usual. So he hadn’t manually forgotten moving his meshes around. And really, using the nudge gun to forget that would be a stupid use of the gun to begin with, but Getaway is fairly bored.
Getaway slides the nudge gun back into the holster, relaxing a bit when he feels the click of the safety activating —holstering it makes it lock automatically, prevents it from firing on its wielder.
There’s a sound somewhere above him and Getaway’s helm snaps up to investigate, but there’s nothing of note on the ceiling. Nothing but boring tiles.
He’s not started counting them yet, but he imagines it’ll happen one of these —
A tile in the ceiling is moved, and Getaway sucks in a sharp vent when he remembers that there’s vents crisscrossing the entire ship. Skids used to take him exploring in them, the both of them talking over comms or in hushed whispers.
Skids is dead now.
Dead because of Getaway.
The tile is pulled in, slid over, before a yellow-plated arm slips out, followed by a shoulder and a helm, plated crimson red and framed by expressive yellow finials.
Getaway’s optics widen and he feels a strange cold-hot pulse in his spark.
“Atomizer?” he whispers, something that’s a combination of fear and hope coiling in his chest.
Atomizer visibly perks, his lips — his mask is off —quirking up into a smile and his finials flicking forward slightly.
“Guess you got out of the…office,” Getaway says slowly, feeling guilt and fear rise up in him; Atomizer was only locked in that office because of him, after all, because Getaway had locked him in there. “Are we gonna argue more about that, or are we done?”
Getaway doesn’t know which option he’d prefer.
He also doesn’t like the sting in his chest when the words are we done leave his intake. There’s a hidden second meaning to that, a silent is this relationship over?
Atomizer doesn’t reply, at least not with words. He makes a strange garbled chirping noise and tilts his helm, still smiling.
Getaway frowns behind his mask; he didn’t think —he’d definitely hit Atomizer during their argument, but he hadn’t thought it had been hard enough to short out his vocaliser. Had it?
“Vocaliser damaged?” Getaway asks slowly, brow ridge raising.
But Atomizer isn’t paying attention to him now, he’s pulling his legs through the opening in the ceiling vent and then he’s dropping down into the habsuite and Getaway’s able to see the cables sprouting from his back, the ones that cling to the lip of the vent to slow his fall like a rappel line. Atomizer has six in total; two at his shoulders, two at his midsection, and two right above where his backstrut meets his hips.
Getaway can see now that his frame is just a little off, a little to the left of what a Cybertronian should look like. His entire frame is just the slightest bit lankier, the tips of his digits now tapering to sharp claws, his posture more animalistic than mechanoid.
“Scorponok did this, didn’t he?” Getaway says to no one, because Atomizer can’t understand him anymore.
The only thing Atomizer can understand is hunger, and the drive to state that hunger.
And he’s looking directly at —if Scorponok had done the same to the rest of the crew —what is probably the only thing on the ship that’ll satisfy him.
Getaway’s spark.
“I turned my amica into a sparkeater,” Getaway whispers in horror.
Atomizer.
He’s been turning the name over in his head, pleasantly surprised by how right it feels to assign to himself.
Atomizer.
Content with that, he focuses back on the reason he’s in this den; his mate. His mate is a little smaller than him, with sleek white and blue plating and a glossy red cockpit, his face obscured by a golden mask and framed by a black helm with prominent audial horns. In other words, his mate is beautiful.
Atomizer had visited this den —the one instinct told him belonged to his mate —earlier, but his mate hadn’t been there at the time, so he’d decided just to tidy up the nest as best he could and come back later, after he’d hunted.
Hunting had ended up a bust, although he had managed to find part of some prey —it was the creature’s lower half, already greyed, its energon staining the wall its stump of a waist lay pressed against. Atomizer had eaten his fill before gnawing and tearing at a nice, juicy portion of the meal, securing the piece in his cables before scampering off back to find his mate. He didn’t know if his mate had already eaten, but it would be rude to return from a hunt without sustenance for his mate.
Now, standing before his mate, he still isn’t sure if he’s eaten yet. His frame looks pristine, but he’s shaking, and his body language is difficult for Atomizer to read. He isn’t… like Atomizer.
Because Atomizer is a predator.
But his mate…
…his mate is prey.
Atomizer takes a step forward, warbling questioningly at his mate and uncoiling the cable that carries the piece of prey. He transfers it to a servo and tilts his head, holding it out.
The only sound in the den is the quiet drip drip-drip of oil and energon leaking from the fuel he offers.
And then his mate backs away.
Atomizer blinks, his cables slowly falling limp at his sides.
His mate looks frightened, his pretty blue optics blown wide and his vents stuttering unevenly, plating pulled in tight to his frame.
Why is his mate afraid?
Atomizer takes another few steps closer, opening his mouth to make another inquisitive sound, but he stops when his mate whimpers. It’s another one of those sounds like Atomizer’s name, one of those complicated strings of noises that Atomizer can’t parse, but the sound is clearly of fear.
Atomizer turns, optics scanning the den for any potential threats, but there’s none to be found. There’s nothing obvious that would be causing his mate’s distress, unless —
Atomizer’s finials go slack and he looks back at his mate, shrinking back into himself.
Is his mate afraid of him?
Atomizer backs away, setting the offering of fuel down and nudging it closer to his mate before quickly darting backwards again. His mate doesn’t make any move to take the offering.
Atomizer lets out a soft, forlorn whine, before arching his cables and hauling himself back up into the tunnels above his mate’s den.
He’ll come by later, just to check on him.
He’ll…ignore the ache in his spark, for now.
His mate doesn’t…want him, right now.