so if you're out there in the cold, i'll cover you in moonlight

[knightlite]

A:
Well, this was unexpected.

The last thing Wing remembers is the fight outside New Crystal City, trying to keep an optic on Drift, the slaver, a sword-thrust--he'd felt it, hadn't he? He looks down at the front of his chassis, touching the barest hint of a scratch and still feeling the sick weight of inevitability pressing heavily on his tanks. But.

Not dead. And hale and whole, apparently, just... elsewhere.

He settles down by the crater and cycles his vents steadily, dimming his optics and trying to settle his mind, to let the awful certainty drain from him to make room for whatever this new future might bring.

---

B:
Meditation, such as it was, didn't take him very long, and once he's sufficiently centered he gets up, brushes the dust from his greaves, and settles off in the direction of the first populated area he sees. He wanders around the broken, empty city, watching intently--it tugs at him, because this place is most definitely an old, destroyed Cybertron, almost a sad parody of what once had been his home. But there's signs of new growth here, too--habitation and rebuilding. The thought makes him smile a little as he pokes around, waiting to bump into one of the new inhabitants and hoping whoever it is can answer at least some of his questions.

Comments

[knightlite]

"I see," Wing says, shifting comfortably. "I would like to get to know more about you, but I don't know exactly what you mean by 'small talk,' so I'm not sure how to do that." He watches that wariness in her face, how genuinely confused he seems, and settles in, intrigued.

"Is there anything in particular you'd like to talk about?"

[loyaute]

Know more about her. That puzzles Arcee even more. "You don't know who I am." It's not a question - she'd have thought she'd been infamous among the remaining Cybertronians as there weren't very many left. Well, before they found out about the colonies. They wouldn't know, but they weren't Cybertronian. Not like her. "Arcee," she finally offers - pressing one hand to the badge on her chest. "I'm.." Here she founders, before settling on the simplest thing. "An Autobot."

She's silent for another second more before speaking again. "You don't look like a NAIL," Arcee admits, leaving no indication of the confusion that gives her. She needs to know so she can readjust herself and act accordingly.

[knightlite]

"It's nice to meet you, Arcee," he says. "I'm Wing, and I'm a member of the Circle of Light. Or... I was, at least." He looks thoughtful, then curious. "What do NAILs look like?"

[loyaute]

His pleasantries get her to scoff, a smirk pulling at her lips. No one thinks it's 'nice' to meet her. He definitely doesn't know who she is.

"Depends on where they spent most of the war." Circle of Light. Arcee has to think on this for a long moment before she can place him - a group that abandoned Cybertron, led by a former senator. There'd been something about the Lost Light running into them recently? Arcee doesn't know, Prowl was the one who'd obsessed over Rodimus' reports like he could make them tell him something new.

[knightlite]

"Hmmm," Wing says, watching her face shift and rocking back on his heels a little, still trying to feel her out just as much as she is him, unsure quite what to make of her--though this exchange was getting more familiar by the word.

"And where did you spend most of the war, Arcee?"

[loyaute]

"Around. Garrus-9."

She also spent six years killing Jhixaus. But that's not most of what she was doing for the four million year war. Which was simple, she misses that. She knew who she was and what she was doing then in a way she's still trying to feel out now.

[knightlite]

That seems to almost startle him, his optics widening slightly.

"Garrus-9?" he asks, his mouth crimping at the corners. "Were you trapped there, when it fell?"

[loyaute]

So he has heard of it. There's a flicker of a smirk across her face before settling into the detached neutrality she finds she's cultivating the longer she's here. "I was out on parole." They needed her to fight off an incursion and she left, taking her freedom when it was offered.

The fact it fell doesn't bother her. She was occupied then, anyway.

[knightlite]

"Oh," Wing says, visibly relieved. "Good, then. I'm glad." His expression lightens again, and he looks curiously at her.

"Do you mind telling me why you were there in the first place?" he asks, his optics on her face. "I understand it's a very personal question--please don't feel any obligation to answer if you'd rather not."

[loyaute]

Arcee doesn't answer his question right away, instead focused on his face for a flicker of expression that isn't pathetically earnest. It's so unlike any other bot she's run into that it takes her completely by surprise. Huh.

"I was looking for someone. Anyone who got in my way I killed. Didn't matter who." Autobot or Decepticon - they all fell on her sword when they came between her and her goal. "I found him eventually," and that's when her expression turns deadly and sharp, corners of her mouth turning up into a cruel smile.

[knightlite]

"I see," Wing says carefully, finally feeling like he's beginning to. But there's still no judgment in his face, only clear, calm inquiry.

"And what happened when you found him?"

[loyaute]

She's quiet for a long moment, optics narrowed in focus on his face. No one's approached her for this story in a long while. Most of them know, and if they don't know then they do know better than to bring it up with her. No one's asked about it, though. That's new.

"I killed him. And then I killed him again and again and again until I got bored." Her grip changes on the wall. "And then I just found a new way to kill him after."

Delivered as matter of factly as one pleased.

[knightlite]

Wing's optics widen almost imperceptibly, but he doesn't question the logic of her murdering a mech more than once--it hardly seems to be the point. He shifts a little as she does but he doesn't seem unnerved, or worried, or frightened, or even particularly wary.

"Well," he says finally, sounding thoughtful. "Did it help?"

[loyaute]

"You're the first person to ask that," she admits, taken aback by the frankness of it. Most people don't inquire after her personal health or well being. Not that Arcee wants them to, but it's surprising all the same. Finally letting her grip losen, Arcee slides down the wall until she lands - crouched, but straightening up instantly.

"Yeah. It did."

[knightlite]

"Really?" Wing sounds surprised, and he doesn't move away in the slightest when she drops closer. "It seems like a logical question. I doubt you'd bother going to all that effort for no reason." He shrugs a little.

"Personally, I can't imagine doing something like that to someone else, but I think that's because it wouldn't help me. I'm glad that it helped you." His expression is unbelievably mild, barely calculating at all, but his optics watch her closely as he speaks, probing, gauging her reaction. "I'm relieved that all that suffering wasn't for nothing, for one thing, but also because I think you must have needed whatever it was you got out of it very badly, to do what you did."

[loyaute]

She laughs, then realizes he's being honest, and her laughter dies in her throat while she stares at him. What the hell was she supposed to do with someone like this? Her fingers flex, itching to be wrapped around the hilt of her sword - things made sense when she focused on violence. It was simple, straightforward.

Like Wing, she thinks, but in an entirely different way.

He, at least, has not called her crazy once. Which is better than some of the people she'd grown to tolerate and watch for clues on how to interact normally. "It helped me think," Arcee hazards, before her voice regains the strength she's used to speaking with. "I'm not-- whatever they say. If you ask. I know exactly what I'm doing and why I'm doing it."

Arcee shrugs, and feels the conversation has drawn to an end. Or if it hasn't, an end she's going to make. He doesn't need to know more about her than what she's offered. And she doesn't feel any inclination to know more about him. She doesn't feel that towards anyone, so Wing shouldn't take it personally.

[knightlite]

Wing shifts as she does now, his optics flickering to the flex of Arcee's hands, the twitch towards her weapons, and his own body coiling subtly taut as honed, immediate fighter's instincts kick in. He hesitates and wrests control of himself again, the tension flowing out of him like water and his posture opening up.

"I wasn't under the impression you didn't know," he says. "On the contrary, you seem extremely self-aware to me. Granted, if killing someone repeatedly helped you think, I'd say that means I probably don't do things for the same reasons you do, but that doesn't mean your reasons are any better or worse than mine."