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mighty-ant · 10 months ago

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don't go breaking my spark, part 1

ao3

Noah thought he understood war.

A mess of treaties and broken alliances that changed by the decade. The political power plays that went over the heads of grunts like him. The staccato of gunfire around him, no idea what direction it was coming from. Squinting against the glare of the sun, explosions of dirt, and the blood trailing from the gash above his eyes as his CO screamed in his face to get them reconnected with SatComm and keeping his hands steady at the same time he thought about his last call with Kris, who had quietly admitted that his arms had started hurting so bad that he couldn’t sleep some nights.

But for all the chaos of the battlefield, none of it seemed to matter when he was back home. Noah still jumped every other time he heard an engine backfire, the rattle of the subway sounded like the ratatattat of machine gun fire, and the nightmares were…pretty bad, but on his block, in his borough, in this city, life moved on without incident. Largely unaffected by the outcome of wars taking place hundreds of thousands of miles away.

It was almost quaint, knowing what he knew now. Having fought beside beings who were trillions of lightyears from home, and still had their war following them on bleeding, dogged feet. Whose war had lasted longer than humans had walked the Earth.

“Had” being the key word. Past tense.

Because Cybertron was dying.

“The core, the Well, they’ve gone dark, Prime,” relayed a gaunt red and yellow mech across a shuddering connection, the reverb only adding to the strain of his words. “Not destroyed, not taken, just—dark.”

For the first time in eight years, the Autobots were able to create a secure communication line with their forces on Cybertron, with help from the Joes’ advanced (by Earth standards) tech. The signal had to be bounced from Arcee’s comm station, between satellites, off a nebula, triangulated by an Autobot spaceship named Cosmos (as in he was a bot who turned into a spaceship), and finally decrypted by Blaster, chief communications officer.

Only Optimus was directly on the call, but the rest of them stood gathered around the projector, secure in the Autobot wing of the base. They were all anxious for news in their own way, even Mirage—or should he say especially Mirage, who tried so hard for nonchalance that he wound all the way back around to deranged, even insisting Noah join him on a quick joyride not even ten minutes before the transmission was scheduled to go live.

Only Ratchet threatening to weld his aft to the floor got Mirage to finally sit still. That, and maybe Noah letting Mirage gleefully perch him on his shoulder had something to do with it. He rarely let Mirage cart him around outside of vehicle mode, especially in front of the others. Noah wanted them to respect him after all, and he figured that might be a little tough if he let his best friend use him like a personal shoulder angel, no matter how much he maybe sorta enjoyed letting Mirage get his hands on him.

Unlike Noah, Charlie had no such qualms, today or any other day. If she wasn’t in the medbay or one of the garages, she could be found lounging in Bumblebee’s arms while playing video games or chatting with another bot. Even now, Bumblebee had her carefully cradled in his folded arms. Hell, if he had it his way, he’d probably never let her feet touch the ground at all.

All this to say, because of his unique perch, Noah felt the way Mirage’s plating rattled and the steady hum of his fans went silent when Blaster haltingly explained that transwarp or no transwarp, there would be no going home.

Most of the explanation went over Noah’s head since he was still playing catchup with his Cybertronian vocabulary. There was talk of energon shortages and bloody battles over resources against Decepticons with scary-ass names (names like Shockwave, Brawl, and Skullcrusher, what the hell ). Ultra Magnus and the Wreckers were MIA. All of the Aerialbots were dead. After four million years of fighting, the planet couldn’t sustain life anymore.

And all the while, a pit opened in Noah’s gut so deep he felt it might swallow him whole.

An entire planet, lost. Mirage’s planet. Even with the nightmare memory of Unicron fresh in his mind, this was almost just as impossible to imagine. Made even more so by the fact that he’d actually seen Cybertron—or at least parts of it, thanks to Mirage’s holo tech.

(“Don’t go snitching on me,” he’d warned as he locked the doors to training room Β behind them. “Don’t even tell Charlie, cuz she’ll 1000 percent tell the Hatchet and I’ll get lectures about straining my emitter for a week.”

“Let’s just see if this light show is worth it, or I might just give you up to Ratchet myself.” Noah grinned. “Performance issues are no joke, man.”

Mirage just rolled his optics, such a purely human gesture in his uniquely alien face that it sparked fondness in Noah’s chest even when Mirage was being a little shit.

“It’s cute that you think you’re funny. Now shut up and let me concentrate.”

Noah felt his ears go red, an awful tell that used to have him sticking his head under the faucet to make it go away when he was Kris’ age. Luckily, Mirage looked like he actually was busy concentrating, so Noah’s growing inclination to act the fool around his best friend stayed his secret.

For a couple seconds, nothing happened. The training room was easily half the size of a football field, built out of concrete and steel beams that were already showing signs of wear despite the Autobots only being two months in residence. There were a couple suspicious blaster burns in the ceiling that made Noah think that Ironhide and Aileron might’ve gotten a little too trigger happy with Brainstorm’s latest weapons upgrade.

He started to hear something. Not quite music, since no instrument he knew of could make a sound like this. It was more like a hum, almost too quiet to be registered, but thrumming under his breastbone like a second heartbeat. Utterly unfamiliar, but calming instead of frightening.

And around Noah, the drab walls of the training room melted away with a flicker of residual blue energy. The ceiling shifted into a purple, starless expanse and the stars were instead flung all around him, stretching seemingly for miles in every direction. Floating everywhere, inches in front of his face and even thirty feet above, were glittering crystals in various shades of blue, green, and teal arranged in intricate geometric shapes. The cement floor under his feet became a path through the crystal artwork, fashioned from perfectly smooth, round metal facets.

“Holy shit…” Noah breathed, spinning in a careful circle. “This is…How’re you even doing this?”

It didn’t even feel like he was in the same room anymore. Far overhead, he could spot little specks soaring through the cloudy purple sky that he was pretty sure were Cybertronian flyers. He’d never known Mirage to project a hologram so huge and detailed.

Mirage chuckled, a low rumble that paired with the humming all around them (the crystals, it had to be coming from the crystals) shot a small thrill up Noah’s spine. “Well it’s not easy, let me tell you.” Despite his flippant tone, there was a hitched quality to his voiceprint that Noah immediately clocked. Not pain, but discomfort, maybe. A projection this complex must’ve been putting a strain on him.

Before he could call him out on it, Mirage went on in a much quieter, reverent voice that Noah had only heard from him a few times before. The one burned into his memory was when Mirage first reawoke after Peru.

Noah hadn’t left the garage in days, couldn’t remember the last time he slept or ate or did something that wasn’t piecing his friend back together and praying he wasn’t too late, and the half-built Porsche had shuddered under his hands before almost transitioning to root mode, briefly revealing a flicker of those arresting, otherworldly blue optics that Noah thought he’d never see again. Mirage’s voice had warbled out into the air, groggy and disbelieving and maybe a little bit awed: “ Noah, love. That you?”

“All this is footage I pulled outta my memory banks. It’s impossible to create a holo like this from scratch, even for me,” Mirage explained as he stepped up beside Noah.

He tore his eyes away from the crystal artwork to glance up at Mirage, and found himself mesmerized all over again.

Privately, Noah had realized that he enjoyed tracing the shape of Mirage’s high silver cheekbones and the curve of his waist in his mind’s eye as much as he did human men and women in the past. Everything machine, everything alien , about his best friend that had so unnerved him in those first frantic hours following his attempted car theft-turned alien abduction wasn’t just familiar now, it was comforting. Breathtaking. Alluring .

And now, with Mirage’s silver plating reflecting the glow of the crystals like a living kaleidoscope, Noah couldn’t look away if he tried.

His throat worked uselessly for a second. “So where, uh,” he started, hoping he didn’t sound as hoarse as he felt. “Where are we supposed to be?”

“These are the Helix Crystal Gardens before the war. A place of peace, tranquility and blah blah blah.” Even if he was trying to be flippant, Noah was well-practiced at recognizing the sincerity in Mirage’s voice, so he didn’t take the words or the sarcastic roll of his wrist all that seriously. This place, so indescribably beautiful it almost felt holy, meant something to Mirage as more than just another chance to show off.

Instead of the smartass remark that Mirage seemed to be gunning for, something careless and easy like, ‘Tranquil? You?’ Noah said, “This place is beyond dope, man.” He felt he should whisper like he would in church. “It’s fucking beautiful . Don’t tell me you could come here whenever you wanted?”

While maybe subtle to the untrained eye, Noah watched the curve of Mirage’s cheeks rise with his smile and the way the tires on his back hitched up slightly, bashfully even, and Noah felt himself go flush with victory usually reserved for the battlefield.

“Well, Praxus was clear on the other side of the continent, but I could afford to spare the energon back then,” Mirage drawled, looking pleased.

He started walking, taking the smaller, careful steps he usually adopted when they walked side by side. Noah followed, fairly confident that Mirage wouldn’t let him walk into a wall or anything, and was amazed when the projection of the gardens moved with them, as if they really were journeying along the path.

“Praxus?” Noah repeated. Another alien word, one of dozens he’d heard and even fewer he’d learned the meaning of, but each one piqued his curiosity like nothing else.

As usual, Mirage didn’t hesitate to explain but because Noah was still watching the play of light across his face, he recognized the instant Mirage’s easy smile turned brittle. “A city-state on Cybertron. Neutral. Until Megatron had it bombed to the Pit and back about 500,000 years into the fighting.”

Around them, the projection seemed to flicker. Noah turned just in time to watch Helix Gardens vanish and the glimpse into serenity replaced with fire and smoke, the humming Noah felt in his heart turned into distant screams. The path beneath them was coated in ash, pockmarked by craters, and littered with the broken shards of every gleaming crystal that had once floated around them, now gone clear and dead like glass.

Then, the hologram disappeared altogether and they were back in the training room like nothing even happened.

Then, Mirage collapsed.

Noah whirled back around, his heart shooting up to strangle him. His immediate terror barely backed off when he saw Mirage was still conscious, if leaning heavily on one knee, his head bowed and expression hidden.

Still, he rushed forward, practically slapping his palms against Mirage’s shoulder plating in his agitation to get close. The metal beneath his hands was warm and trembling almost imperceptibly.

“‘Raj,” Noah started, but wasn’t able to even get out an ‘ are you okay?’ before Mirage raised his head, a tired smirk curving his faceplate that was suddenly inches away from Noah’s own face. This close, Noah could count the individual facets that made up his glowing optics, like the crystals of Helix Gardens but about a thousand times as striking.

“Sorry you had to see that,” Mirage joked weakly.

“Jesus, don’t apologize,” Noah muttered, his cheeks burning, and he jerked his gaze away to stare at the safety of Mirage’s plating instead. He spread his fingers wide against the warm metal, and felt the rumble of Mirage’s engine under his skin, as familiar now as the steady sound of Kris’ breathing when he slept without pain. “You were there? When Praxus was…”

Mirage shrugged under his hands, his smile fixed and usual drawl rendered toneless. Almost matter-of-fact. “Officially, I was undercover with the ‘Cons. But after the bombs, I…I split. Went looking for survivors.”

Noah made himself look back at Mirage’s face, and though Mirage wasn’t staring back, his hollow expression hadn’t changed. Dread was an old friend at this point—so far, none of the bots’ stories about the war included a happy ending.

“Did you find anybody?” he whispered, suspecting he already knew the answer.

“Nah. There was nobody left to find.”)

Noah thought back to all the places on Cybertron that Mirage had shown him: golden Iacon, bars bustling with Cybertronians ranging in size from barely taller than a human to Stratosphere’s height, the skeletal spires of Vos, Helix Gardens, Six Lasers Over Cybertron. Whether the memories were of quiet cityscapes or places crowded with mechs, Mirage had made Cybertron feel alive to Noah.

How much of that, if any, was still standing? Did it even matter, if the planet itself was unsalvageable?

Blaster’s news had a ripple effect among the gathered Autobots, who shared expressions of shock or grief or utter shutdown. Noah barely noticed when Ratchet started clinging to Ironhide’s arm, only that he looked ready to collapse, as Ironhide went blank with shock. Arcee and Aileron were holding hands, the pair of them impressively stoic if not for the way their grip shook between them. Bumblebee had hidden his face in Charlie’s hair, and then her shoulder when she turned to wrap her arms around his neck. Noah thought Brainstorm might’ve left the room entirely, sharp wings pulled taught and trembling. Wheeljack simply sat down, staring dazedly at nothing.

Mirage wasn’t doing any better.

He was glaring at the floor, optics hidden from Noah, and arms folded tightly across his chest. He was still alarmingly silent, though there was a nearly imperceptible whine building from within his chassis, where his fans were straining against his forced stillness. His plating rattled under Noah, like he was trying not to vibrate straight out of his armor.

It was at that moment that Noah realized he’d never seen Mirage angry before.

He was jovial when facing down Scourge, a monster who’d laid out Optimus and killed Bee, when he was taking blaster shots intended for Noah, when he relived the destruction of a city.

But this—getting a secondhand account that his planet was dead? It broke through his force of personality, and Noah felt like a voyeur up there on Mirage’s shoulder, intensely awkward and out of place.

There was a catwalk behind them, just above shoulder length with Mirage, and intended to allow the humans to interact with the bots on more equal footing. Noah started to scoot back towards it. Inelegant maybe, but Mirage had to be way too distracted to care about his stupid ass still sitting up here like a damn parrot.

He’d barely grabbed the railing when Mirage’s hand came down over his middle, holding him in place. It wasn’t especially fast, and it definitely wasn’t painful, but Noah still startled. When he turned back to Mirage, feeling his ears going red, he saw all traces of anger gone from his friend’s face. Instead, he looked unmoored. A little scared. And there was a question in his optics that had Noah nodding in answer and stuffing his own anxieties back in their boxes.

I’ll stay.

Optimus, for his part, had gone stock still. Every piston, strut, and vent was near vibrating with tension and his hands tightened into fists with an intensity that bordered on pain.

“I’m sorry, Prime,” Blaster was saying, his professionalism hanging by a thread. Noah couldn’t even begin to imagine the chaos taking place over there on the other side of the galaxy. “There’s nothing you could’ve—”

“How long?” Optimus scarcely moved, even to speak, and his words came out sounding like boulders grinding against each other. “How long ago did this happen?”

Even over this tenuous connection, the distressed whine of Blaster’s fans could be heard loud and clear. “I—sir, it’s been—”

“Sergeant Blaster.”

A voice interjected from offscreen, and even though the deep voice was utterly calm and measured, Blaster silenced his vocalizer immediately. He ducked his head and stepped back from whatever terminal they were using for the video feed, looking relieved. “Commander,” he said respectfully.

Another Autobot took Blaster’s place, standing stiffly at attention, and Noah would’ve recognized this new mech even if Optimus hadn’t said his name, sonorous with relief that was almost jarring to hear after experiencing the despondent fury of the last few minutes.

“Prowl. It is good to see you again, my friend.”

Black and white, with a red chevron on the front of his helm, this new bot’s doorwings were hitched up high on his back. Compared to Bumblebee’s, which fluttered all over the place with every passing emotion, these were practically immobile, much like his expression, which betrayed almost nothing in its flat impassivity.

(“Now Prowlie, he’s got a stick so far up his ass it’s a miracle he can even transform! You think Optimus was bad when you first met him? Prowl probably would’ve left you handcuffed in that janky warehouse and that would’ve been the end of it,” Mirage had crowed from within the pile of bean bags that he’d dragged into Noah’s on-base quarters next to his, which Mirage had basically commandeered for his use too. With Autobot-sized doors everywhere, Noah had just been asking for it.

He flopped onto a beanbag by Mirage’s head, so that they were only a few feet apart. “So, what? The dude Optimus left in charge of all the Autobots on Cybertron is just a huge jackass? Why’d big man even pick him?”

Mirage vented out slowly, like a sigh, and Noah was close enough that it ruffled his curls. “It’s not like that,” he said grudgingly. “He might have the sense of humor of the T-1000, and kept me and the twins in the brig for like half the war, but he’s one of the good ones. Still a huge dick, though.”)

“Prime, sir. You’re still online. There was a 77.344 percent probability that would not be the case,” Prowl said dryly. “The troops will be pleased.”

Optimus smiled, a small thing and unremarkable by most bots’ standards but the equivalent of breaking into song for him. The last time Noah had seen him so relieved to reunite with another surviving Autobot, it had been Ratchet, who’d been pieced back together by Charlie with the Joes’ resources after his disastrous crash landing on Earth.

“As always, your faith honors me, Prowl. But please tell me, what has happened to Cybertron in my absence?”

The tinge of humor in Prowl’s face disappeared like it had never existed, and he somehow stood even straighter. His words were grim, if short and to the point. “It is as I predicted, and as we feared would come to pass. As of two stellar cycles, the core ceased functioning, and the production of energon has stopped. And as you are well aware, with the Allspark lost, we lack the ability to revive the planet.”

Optimus vented deeply, a sharp, prolonged hiss that was practically deafening in the dead quiet meeting room. “My Autobots?” was all he asked, utterly grave.

Prowl inclined his head. “Many have already fled. Those who made it past the Decepticon blockade above the planet have scattered. As we speak, the remaining command staff and our squads are preparing the Ark for interstellar travel. We intended to follow the Decepticons, as we all detected the signal beacon of a…a Transwarp Key on the far side of the galaxy.” Here, Prowl’s calm, near-monotone cracked slightly with disbelief. “In fact, though the signal has been lost, it seems to share an origin point with your current transmission.”

“The Transwarp Key was here, Prowl, on Earth,” Optimus explained. “Although I was forced to destroy it, to prevent Unicron from entering this galaxy and devouring this planet, as well as countless other worlds.”

Prowl stared, his yellow optics unblinking. “Unicron exists. And you defeated Him.”

“I had help,” Optimus demurred.

“ I wish I could say I’m surprised, Prime, but I learned to disable the majority of my logic circuits when conversing with you approximately 3 million years ago. This planet you’re on: if the Transwarp Key was sent there, it would mean that there is energon present.”

“Yes, the planet Earth is rich with it. And if the Decepticons get to it first, I can only imagine that they will seek to reignite our war on this planet. How soon will the Ark be ready for launch? We would welcome your aid in repelling their invasion.”

Prowl held up a hand to stop him. Most startling of all, Optimus acquiesced.

“Prime, you misunderstand. While we possess an operational spacebridge, the Ark was damaged in the fighting. Its repairs won’t be complete for an orbital cycle at least. And the Decepticons are already on their way. ”

…

Having Sigma 6, G.I. Joe-Autobot headquarters, built deep in the base of the Adirondacks was one of the best things to come out of this alliance.

With the existence of giant alien robots still being a Secret with a capital “S,” they’d mostly been stuck in hiding these last seven years, traveling between abandoned warehouses to filthy junkyards to dense woods (if they were lucky), and so on. But Sigma 6 was isolated, with a security perimeter of several dozen miles making sure no lost hiker wandered into live fire drills or an Autobot taking a stroll.

Relocating to the base had itself been a relief to Noah, who’s guilt had grown every month Mirage stayed cooped up in Reek’s garage after Noah finally finished piecing him back together. With all its people and cameras, Brooklyn just wasn’t built for a tirelessly gregarious, unapologetically loud bot like Mirage, who chafed under prolonged solitude and the need to stay incognito. And even worse, Mirage chose the cramped garage over staying with the rest of the Autobots full time.

“Y’know you don’t… owe me or nothing like that, right?” Noah had blurted one night, as they parted ways with Bumblebee after catching Back to the Future at a drive-in in Hoboken. Bumblebee’s taillights were shrinking in the rearview mirror and Noah felt like a selfish bastard for hoarding all of Mirage’s time. “If you want to go back to Bee and the other guys, you can. I don’t want you feeling like you’re stuck with me, man—”

“What, and break up the band!” Mirage demanded, sounding hurt and not just for show. Even without seeing his face, Noah had learned to tell when he was being purposely dramatic. “Noah, forget the fact that I wouldn’t even be here without you; you’re my boy! There’s nowhere I’d rather be. Honest.”

Noah had chuckled, swallowing against a sudden tightness in his throat. “Cross your spark?”

Mirage laughed, low and warm, the sound seeming to come from all around Noah, and it raised goosebumps along his arms and the back of his neck. “And hope to die.”

Nevermind that back then, Mirage’s paint was still mismatched and his new parts had yet to fully integrate with his protoform (new terms Noah had since learned from Charlie and Ratchet). It hadn’t stopped him from still feeling guilty, but also maybe secretly a little…pleased that Mirage would choose Noah and all that entailed (cooped up in a garage he could barely stand up in and a nosy little brother who’d taken it upon himself to integrate him into human culture by way of every episode of Power Rangers) over his own team.

Even now, with the rest of the Autobots literally feet away, it was still Noah who Mirage sought out.

Beyond the east entrance of Sigma 6, there was a small valley that bottomed out into a lake. Thick with pine trees, the shore scattered with thousands of stones worn smooth by the lapping water, it was always empty save for the occasional wild animal, and so far they hadn’t seen anything bigger than a coyote. In the last few months it had become his and Mirage’s go-to hangout spot when they wanted it to be just them. If the others knew about it (which was likely), well, finders keepers was apparently a universal concept.

Once the direct line to Cybertron was cut and Optimus, Arcee, and Ironhide locked themselves in with Joe command to discuss what to do about the hostile alien invasion force apparently on a beeline for Earth, the rest of the team scattered. They disappeared deeper into the base in pairs or trios, nobody wanting to linger where grief still hung heavy like smoke, noxious and black. It felt like attending a wake with no funeral and no body to bury.

Mirage glanced at Noah out of the corner of his optic and just said, “Lake?”

Noah barely started to nod before Mirage folded into vehicle mode around him and tore out of the base like Scourge himself was back from the dead and hot on their tail (or more likely directly in their path, as Mirage had proven the sort who sprinted toward danger with a smile on his face).

They often drove down to the lake when Mirage needed time away from the others, or Noah wanted a taste of fresh air and real sunlight after one too many days underground. They’d even brought Kris up during the winter months to let him see real snow, not the freezing gray street sludge they knew from living in the city.

But this was no normal lake visit, even by Noah’s now extremely skewed definition of “normal.”

Mirage actually drove them all the way to the lake without a word of protest, even after repeatedly bitching and moaning on past visits about not having four-wheel drive and not being made for offroading despite being an alien robot who literally traveled through space to get to Earth. In fact, after his single request, Mirage hadn’t spoken again.

Trees blurred past them as they left the dirt road leading to Sigma 6 and crossed over to a rocky, uneven hillside. In the driver’s seat, Noah didn’t complain either as he was bounced all over the place, keeping a hand braced on Mirage’s roof. There was a frantic edge to the silence pressing in around him, like a rubber band pulled taught, and Mirage was racing to reach their destination before everything finally snapped under the strain.

It was a feeling Noah was familiar with, that anxiety buzzing under his skin, like he was gonna explode if he didn’t sprint ten blocks or beat his knuckles purple and bloody on the heavy bag. It was a feeling that demanded action, not stillness, when he was powerless. For Noah, that meant endless bills, Kris’ health. For Mirage, it was home .

And as soon as the shine of the lake’s surface came into view, Mirage proved him right, changing to root mode and dropping Noah on his ass between one blink and the next, the fastest transformation he had( ‘nt) seen yet.

And Mirage didn’t stop. Without any of his usual grace, Mirage stormed down to the shoreline, kicking up stones and dirt along the way. He was shaking his hands out at his sides, a constant, antsy movement matched by the way he was swearing under his breath, mostly in English, other times in Spanish, and some words in Cybertronian, a language that sounded like dialup and Latin had a baby.

Forget the way Mirage held it together back at base; he wasn’t even trying to be subtle about how he felt now, no bad jokes or swagger. It was an extremely rare display of Mirage’s temper, and on the one hand, Noah knew it meant Mirage trusted him enough to let those defenses drop.

But on the other hand, it hurt to watch his best friend in this much pain, so much that for the first time, raw anger was his only outlet. Mirage’s engine growled as he paced and his steps were loud and heavy, throwing every pound of his several-ton body into his stride, in direct contrast to the usual uncanny grace that had him dancing across battlefields and sneaking up on Noah in the garage.

With almost anyone else, Elena or Kris or his Ma, Noah wouldn’t hesitate to get close, to cradle their cheek, hug them, anything to try and comfort them. It had always been second nature for him to protect, to try to fix things anyway he could, ever since the front door slammed behind his dad for the last time, leaving Ma frozen at the kitchen table and Kris sobbing in his crib.

But with Mirage, something always seemed to hold him back. He second-guessed damn near every word, every gesture, and would lose his mind making sure his eyes didn’t linger too long on the curve of Mirage’s lean thighs or the cables that made up the line of his neck. Noah didn’t want to ruin things between them.

Only now it felt like he was watching Mirage unravel, and for all that Noah wanted to help him, he felt worse than useless. There was still so much he didn’t know, hadn’t thought to ask, about the Autobot-Decepticon War and all the Space Robot: 101 he was still catching up on.

To make matters worse, he’d had months to ask his questions, not just of Mirage but the other bots too, and unless he wanted to be a total dick about it then he’d lost his chance.

All of which brought Noah back to the fact that Mirage deserved better than him, but as usual all he had to offer was himself. And since Noah was the only one out here, he would just have to try and be enough.

“C’mon, ‘Raj, warn a guy,” Noah huffed as he got his feet back under him, keeping his tone light as he brushed half melted snow off the seat of his pants, glad that he’d had his parka on him before they booked it. Unlike Brooklyn, which was creeping into humidity in mid-April, the cold up here was constant and jarring whenever they came back to base after spending a couple weeks at home.

As Noah breathed warm air into his cupped palms, he was unable to take his eyes off the way pale sunlight bounced hypnotically off of Mirage’s plating as he moved, sinuous and silver as the lake behind him and just as untouchable as his namesake.

Usually, this was the only reason that it hurt to watch Mirage. But seeing the tension knotting his shoulders and putting that scowl on his face made the ache of longing turn into a fist pressing against his sternum, starting to dig in too deep.

Noah called out to him again, breath fogged in the cold and throat gone tight. “Slow it down, man, not all of us have long-ass legs like you do.”

That finally got Mirage talking, but not to Noah.

“Four million years of fighting for the ‘greater good,’” he barked without looking over, like he hadn’t even heard Noah. “And for what? We still lost the goddamn planet!” He spun around and kicked a hollow log washed up on the shore, and it went searing over Noah’s head with the speed of a jet missile. It exploded into pieces against the trunk of one of the pine trees behind him, knocking the tree itself askew.

Noah ducked, a second too late, and if the trunk had flown a few feet lower it definitely would’ve taken his head off. His heart slammed against his ribcage like it hadn’t since Nightbird snatched him off the ground in Peru, and he was only saved from getting sliced in half by Cheetor’s sharp eye and sharper aim.

“Jesus, watch it, ‘Raj!” he hissed, rising carefully out of his defensive crouch. A surge of delayed adrenaline made his hands shake and words come out sharp and fast, but he was too stunned to be truly angry.

Noah barely caught the slight crunch of stones underfoot before he looked up to find Mirage had already closed the distance between them, kneeling over him with his face inches away and optics spinning fiercely.

“Shit, Noah, I’m so sorry,” he said in a rush, all traces of that overwhelming anger gone and the smooth panels of his face crumpled in anguish. “Primus smelt me, I’m a fucking idiot. Is your central processor in one piece?”

Then, with no advanced warning whatsoever, Mirage’s hands were in his hair, big and yet impossibly gentle for their size. His palm cradled the back of Noah’s head as his fingers wove through his curls with more care than even his Ma had ever shown his hair.

Noah’s voice died an instant, inglorious death, shriveling up before he could do something unconscionable like let out a whimper. His pulse thundered in his ears, the fight-or-flight instinct that had started to fade returning with a vengeance that knocked every thought out of his head.

To make matters worse, at this close range he couldn’t drag his goddamn eyes away from Mirage’s lips. To hell with almost getting his head caved in. Noah wondered, like he had way too many times before (usually late at night, like the lead in some awful romcom) whether his lips would be warm or cold. Would they be soft, with a similar give as a human’s? He’d certainly seen how expressive Mirage could be, his faceplates bending every which way with his emotions.

With Mirage’s hand behind his head, it would be so, so easy for the bot to drag him forward and connect them at the mouth.

Did Cybertronians even kiss? Noah thought so. Or, at least he’d seen Charlie kiss Bumblebee all over his faceplate and the scout nuzzle back, seemingly the best he could do without a traditional mouth.

And hell, he’d been quiet for too long hadn’t he?

Noah dragged his eyes away from the magnetic pull of Mirage’s lips, grasping at the dregs of his sanity like escaping balloon strings as he tried to remember what it was Mirage had said. All that stood out was one of the Cybertronian vocab words he recognized from plenty of Charlie and Ratchet’s ‘Don’t Be A Fragging Idiot’ safety lectures and he latched onto it.

“You mean my head? Nah, man, I’m fine, didn’t even touch me,” Noah blurted, talking way too fast.

He knew he wouldn't be able to think straight with Mirage’s hands on him, so he grabbed Mirage’s wrist (so big his fingers could wrap around it and be nowhere near touching) and tugged it away. He barely applied any force—not that it would’ve made a difference if Mirage really didn’t want to move—but Mirage followed even that gentle pressure and let Noah guide his hand up and away until he was holding it in the space between them.

Noah felt his ears go red and tried laughing it off. “Looks like someone’s gotta work on their aim, huh? What would Ironhide say?”

Mirage didn’t smile back. If anything he just looked more upset, his optics pinched and the glow of the delicate mechanisms dimmed. Just watching him made Noah lose his smile, a pang of worry straightened his spine.

“Noah…” Mirage ducked his head, just for a second, before making himself meet Noah’s eyes again. He raised his free hand, visibly hesitating, before carefully covering the one Noah still had wrapped around his wrist. “That wasn’t…I shouldn't have…you know I’d never do anything to hurt you, right? Not-not by choice. That back there…I don’t want you to think—”

“Gonna stop you there,” Noah interrupted gently, smiling up at Mirage’s big anxious face. He started to wiggle his hand free and Mirage let him go almost immediately—but Noah didn’t let him get far. Screw his hangups, screw his way-more-serious-than-just-a-crush, Noah grabbed Mirage’s hand and held on tight. Or, technically he grabbed the two fingers he could feasibly wrap his hand around.

“It was an accident,” he said firmly, not breaking eye contact. As volatile as Mirage seemed right now, it was crucial that Noah’s sincerity got through to him. “I trust you, ‘Raj, probably more than anyone else I know. Nah, definitely . I know that when I’m with you, I’m safe. Me and my family.”

Mirage sighed, warm air from his cheek vents brushing against Noah’s curls, releasing the tension that had been holding his struts so painfully still. He even smiled, bashful and small. “Thanks, Noah. You and Kris and your Ma…you all matter a lot to me. I never had people before, y’know, not like this, and when I’m with you guys, I dunno. It’s the safest I’ve felt in…hell, stellar cycles.”

Noah knew he hadn’t said as much, but he already thought of Mirage as family. He was practically Ma’s favorite already and the less said about his and Kris’ “secret” two a.m. McDonald’s runs the better. But maybe as anxious as Noah was to say it out loud and claim Mirage as his, to belong among the bots, maybe Mirage felt the same way. Unsure of his place and not wanting to overstep.

Mirage started running his thumb up and down Noah’s knuckles, and he resisted the urge to shiver. Apparently he didn’t do a good enough job, because Mirage frowned and leaned forward, tugging Noah closer by the hand. Noah froze like a damn deer in headlights as their faces got closer and closer and for one breathless, heartstopping moment, he was positive that Mirage was about to kiss him.

Instead, Mirage split apart around him, his transformation to vehicle mode slower than usual as he carefully accommodated for Noah. Even this felt a little bit like an apology for dumping him on his ass earlier.

Either way, it gave Noah precious seconds to get over his own wishful thinking before he found himself in the front seat of the Porsche, the heater running on full blast and already warming his chilled fingers.

“What was that for?” he laughed, stroking a hand across the steering wheel.

Mirage’s engine rumbled around him, like the purring of a housecat. “You humans are so delicate! Couldn’t let my boy get, uh, frostbite or whatever.”

“Yeah huh. Y’know, doc, one of these days I’m making you sit through one of Ratchet’s lectures on human first aid.”

Mirage made an exaggerated sound of disgust through his radio. “Oh, eugh, mercy! I don’t ever wanna think about having to put you back together.”

Noah chuckled quietly, moving his hand lower to thumb over the Autobot symbol on the center of Mirage’s steering wheel. Without Mirage’s stare making him self-conscious, Noah couldn’t help touching him when he was in vehicle mode.

“Nah, I feel ya, man. There’s a lot that I can’t unsee. And people are a lot harder to put back together than ‘bots.”

Mirage didn’t speak again, but his engine let out a whine, plaintive and sad, and Noah knew they were both thinking of the bridge, the heat of blasterfire, Mirage shuddering above him. He flattened his palm over the center of Mirage’s steering wheel and ran his other hand along the inside of his door panel, feeling it tremble. It was just as much a reminder to himself as it was for Mirage that they’d survived and were both far, far from Peru.

The mood had definitely shifted in a more solemn direction, but Noah didn’t mind it. Not the silence that stretched between them either, heavy with feeling but not strained under the weight.

Since he brought Mirage back (and hell, he’d never get tired of saying that), he found there was almost nowhere he’d rather be than in his partner’s presence. Whether that was puttering around his work station in the garage back home while Mirage watched MTV or tried to goad Noah into joining him for a drive, or sparring in his new Wheeljack-designed, Brainstorm-made, and Ratchet-approved exosuit, it didn’t matter what they did so long as Noah could lay eyes on him and remind himself that Mirage was alive and in one piece.

A few minutes passed before Mirage rolled forward, out of the shadow of the treeline and closer to the shore where the sunlight was shining pale through the clouds. Crazy to think after all that had happened, it wasn’t even midday.

As if Mirage had read his mind, he finally spoke again, resigned in a way that Noah didn’t like. “I guess you must have a billion questions, huh?”

“About you? Sure, but only ‘cuz you’re so damn interesting,” Noah teased with the ease of long practice.

Mirage rewarded him with a burst of staticky laughter and a bleat of his horn, hastily silenced. Noah grinned at the sound, and wondered when a Porcshe cracking up had become something so charming.

“Primus, that was embarrassing,” Mirage wheezed through his radio. “You’re a menace. Do the others know how much of a menace you are?”

Noah crossed his arms, leaning back and getting comfortable in the leather seat. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a model Autobot, ask anybody.”

Mirage’s biolights, usually darkened while in vehicle mode, pulsed and illuminated his cabin in brilliant, pale blue. And to Noah’s delight, they didn’t dim again immediately. He preferred them, honestly; they made Mirage look more alive, more himself, even when in disguise. Noah loved tracing the glowing seams of blue when it was just them.

“Noah, seriously, we got a whole slagheap dropped on us today,” Mirage’s voice deepened with sincerity, rumbling pleasantly around him in a way Noah tried not to enjoy too much. “I mean, shit, love, the ‘Cons are on their way here right now, and apparently so is Prowl , y’know, eventually , and I know he hasn’t forgotten about the time I switched out his acid pellet ammo for rust sticks and he’s gonna get his revenge when I least expect it but in a way that makes him look totally innocent—”

“Mirage!” Noah interrupted with a laugh, ignoring the way his face heated at the use of the pet name. “Relax, man. If you wanna talk, we’ll talk, but otherwise I’m fine just chilling here with you. Today was a lot for both of us.”

Mirage more than Noah, but he wasn’t about to say that now.

“Yeah,” Mirage said more quietly. “Yeah, okay.”

And for a couple minutes, that was it. Silence, a rarity in Mirage’s case, went on uninterrupted. Noah leaned his head back but kept his eyes open, tracing Mirage’s nearest array of biolights with his fingertips.

Mirage kept kicking his engine on and off intermittently, like he was talking himself in and out of just gunning it back to the main road and not stopping till they hit Jersey. But the most he actually did was flick his windshield wipers at a squirrel that dared jump on his hood.

His engine roared to life one more time, seats rumbling, and then sharply shut off again. Before Mirage’s engine had completely quieted, he let out a sigh through the radio.

“Did anyone ever tell you how the war got started?”

Starting from the top then.

Noah leaned forward until his chest was pressed against Mirage’s steering wheel and wrapped his arms around the top. “I assumed it was something’ along the lines of Decepticons bad, Autobots good.”

“Heh. Maybe it got more black and white towards the end, as more of us got killed off,” Mirage said in that mournful, earnest way of his whenever he talked about the war. “But really, at first, the Decepticons were almost what Cybertron needed. A revolution. Until everything flew off the rails.”

This was definitely a side of the story Noah hadn’t heard before. Listening to Ironhide and Ratchet tell it, you’d think the Decepticons ate babies and personally created the hole in the ozone layer. Noah didn’t doubt they were evil—he’d heard about too many friends who’d been cut down, the cities leveled, and a deathtoll that broke his brain—but no one had ever explained where it all began and Noah hadn’t known how to ask.

“Even before the war, Cybertron wasn’t exactly a paradise. Our society was based around the idea that your alt mode was your Primus-given gift and if he made you a drill, then you literally had no choice but to slave away in the energon mines. If you were a microscope, you were meant for science, and a career-change wasn’t an option. The Senate made it law that your alt mode equaled your class, your function in society, whether that was as a disposable fourth-class sanitation ‘bot with no rights or a filthy stinking rich noble who could do whatever the hell he wanted,” Mirage finished with surprising bitterness.

Noah stroked Mirage’s steering wheel with his thumb. A weak attempt at comfort maybe but he couldn’t exactly ask Mirage to transform just so he could try to give him a hug. “Which one were you?”

He could hear the way Mirage preened, but even that fell flat, like his spark wasn’t in it. “What, can’t you guess?

The thing was, Noah could sorta see it: a Mirage with gleaming, undamaged plating living some pampered life on a shiny alien planet he’d only seen snippets of. After all the shit Mirage went through in Peru, he probably deserved to get the royal treatment. But at the same time, it didn’t fit the image of Mirage that Noah knew—the Mirage who raced through a battlefield just to save his sorry ass, who made a promise to Noah’s little brother and almost paid for it with his life.

Some rich prick (former or otherwise) wouldn’t have accepted Kris’ crappy plastic radio and integrated it into his systems just so they could talk video games and keep tabs on Noah from a million miles away. Not to mention everything Mirage had done for his family since then.

“So, what? Were you like a duke or something?” Noah asked, still trying to wrap his head around it all. Alien robot classism. Huh.

Mirage made a ‘so-so’ sort of noise. “Something like that. An empty title that came with plenty of perks I didn’t do anything to earn.

“And since I was blowing all my time on Velocitron race tracks and getting wasted at bougie clubs, I sorta missed the start of the revolution. I mean, I’d seen the Decepticon propaganda—it was all over the place back then—and I agreed with what they were saying. Abolish the caste system, make all Cybertronians equal, give them the freedom to choose what to do with their lives. All good things, right?”

Noah winced at the plaintive strain to Mirage’s voice print. He remembered that Praxus had been neutral in the civil war when the Decepticons bombed and burned it to the ground, leaving no survivors. When Ironhide arrived on Earth, he’d brought the remains of an Autobot named Cliffjumper to give him the proper funeral rites—he’d been found split down the middle, his body in two clean, gruesome halves.

It was obvious that whatever good the Decepticons promised at the start didn’t mean shit now, and they were uniquely evil in a way Noah hadn’t thought possible. Until he watched Scourge murder Bumblebee and add his badge to his collection. Until he corrupted Airazor, making her rot from the inside out. Until he fired on Mirage, huddled over Noah as a living shield, and kept firing until he’d blown off Mirage’s arm, his leg, and burned a hole straight through his spine. Until he thought he’d killed them both.

Until Scourge brought Unicron to Earth, ready to sacrifice billions to his master’s hunger.

“I thought about joining,” Mirage muttered. “I almost did .”

“The Decepticons?” Noah asked with as little inflection as possible. He knew what side Mirage landed on, and more importantly, he knew Mirage .

But he reacted like Noah had just accused him of masterminding the entire Decepticon agenda, his engine whining in distress. “I thought about it,” Mirage stressed. “But before I could get serious about it, the ‘Cons up and executed the Senate, killed the old Prime, and BOOM we were at war. And we stayed at war for 4 million years. Give or take a thousand.”

“Jesus,” Noah breathed. He felt a little queasy, like he always did when he was reminded of how insanely long-lived Mirage and all of the ‘bots were. It was easy to forget that his best friend was older than human civilization when he and Kris were tag teaming Noah into letting them stay up late playing Yoshi’s Island on a school night.

Mirage was a world unto himself; Noah would never see Cybertron except through his eyes, his words. He’d lived an entire lifetime, and a war, on another planet that could never return to the way it used to be.

“I joined the Autobots ‘cuz I wanted to help end the war as fast as possible,'' Mirage rumbled around him. “I thought it would all be worth it in the end. When we saved Cybertron, I’d be able to look back and know I did my part.” He scoffed. “Well I did my part, all right. Dead core means dead planet, dead people, Cybes at the top of the intergalactic endangered species list. Let’s just name me the next Prime while we’re at it!”

That brought Noah up short. He lurched away from the wheel, and Mirage immediately jolted around him, his frame tensing like he was expecting an attack.

“The hell do you mean ‘endangered?’”

That was a word reserved for pretty little birds in the Amazon or dolphins caught in fishing nets, not Mirage , powerful and alien and ethereal. Not Optimus, or Ratchet, or any of the other ‘bots whose bodies were half weapon and all power.

Noah wracked his brain, thinking back to Blaster’s grieving, panicked report and Prowl’s more perfunctory recap. Most of what they’d said had flown over his head, sure, but he would’ve noticed them mentioning something that intensely dramatic on top of the whole dead planet thing , right?

‘Endangered’ meant a species couldn’t make any more of themselves. And yeah, it’s not like he thought giant alien robots were having sex to reproduce; he didn’t know how they did it, but he did know that they had relationships and got married, just like humans. There was enough innuendo thrown around on base for Noah to figure out that they did something that was like sex but wasn’t , and he didn’t want to know any more than that (a baldfaced fucking lie. He wanted to know, he really, really did but who could he ask? Charlie? Ratchet? Mirage? He’d rather face down Scourge’s Sweeps again than put himself through that).

“Oh, right,” Mirage murmured, like he’d just remembered something obvious to everyone but Noah, which wasn’t doing him any favors.

Then Mirage shifted around him, still keeping his transformation slow, and a couple seconds later Noah found himself sitting on one of Mirage’s folded knees instead of his front seat. If Noah wanted to, he could reach out and lay his hand flat against Mirage’s abdomen, a recurring temptation whenever they were this close and he wasn’t doing any repairs on Mirage’s reckless ass.

Instead of just blushing and fantasizing about tracing his transformation seams (again), Noah looked up at Mirage’s hesitant face and dim optics and determinedly locked down the usual minefield of want-to-touch/don’t-be-stupid that came from being so close. He leaned back, trusting Mirage to catch him, and his boy didn’t disappoint. One of his wide silver palms came up to wrap around the middle of Noah’s back, pressing softly to keep him supported.

“Do you remember what Blaster and Prowl said about Cybertron’s core? About how it’d gone dark?” Mirage asked gently. His tone reminded Noah of the leadup to Ma explaining that his baby brother, who couldn’t even walk yet, was very sick and he was going to be sick for a very long time.

Noah nodded haltingly.

“The thing is, we don’t make new beings the way you humans do. Don’t have the right equipment , y’know?” And Mirage winked, putting his whole body into it, even giving a little hip wiggle that made Noah snort with unexpected laughter. He almost fell right off Mirage’s knee for real this time, but Mirage reeled him back in with both hands, his grin only a little of the shit-eating kind.

“So how—?” Noah wheezed.

“Think of us as being born like cabbage patch kids instead,” Mirage interrupted, almost sending Noah into another laughing fit that was toeing the line of hysteria. But even with the tension broken, there was something flimsy about Mirage’s usual easy levity that made it impossible to completely banish the dread from the back of Noah’s mind.

That dread proved justified as Mirage continued explaining, trying to keep his tone light, but the tightness around his optics and the way he curled around Noah betrayed his true misery. “Cybertron’s core seeded fields of hotspots on the planet’s surface, creating new sparks. New life. So with no Allspark, and a dead core, well, that’s sorta it for us as a species. Zip. Zilch. No new ‘bots, maybe ever again.”

Noah’s stomach plummeted so fast he almost staggered, horror rushing in to fill its place. “Oh, ‘Raj…” he murmured, at a loss for what to say. What was there to say?

From a human perspective, it was impossible to imagine his entire species losing the ability to give birth, to create children and watch them grow up to be the next generation. Everyone would just linger, getting older and dying off until there was no one left. It would be the end of human civilization, period. All that on top of a war that already resulted in the deaths of….thousands? Millions?

What could Noah say to fix that?

Mirage bowed forward until his forehead was almost touching Noah’s, and his voice rumbled through the inches of space between them, so quiet it was almost drowned out by the water lapping at the lakeshore.

“The thing is…we were fighting for so long over who should control Cybertron’s spark that we ended up being the reason it was extinguished. And now, oops! Our bad! We couldn’t even keep Earth secret from the ‘Cons! Now I just…I don’t want the same thing to happen to your planet.”

And with Mirage sounding so pained and hunched so close to him, close enough for Noah to cradle his cheek and smooth the regret and apology from his faceplates if he was brave enough, it brutally reminded him of Mirage huddled over him, shuddering under blaster fire, and still smiling down at him as his optics went dark.

Blinking past the memory, Noah reached out and traced the ‘Y’-shaped biolights on Mirage’s chest before laying his hand flat against it, covering it with his palm. He focused on the purr of the countless components and gears that made up Mirage, humming their secret song beneath his armor chassis.

Mirage just watched him, his optics at half-mast. After all that talking, he seemed fine with the quiet now, weary in a way Noah hadn’t seen since the night Ironhide arrived with Cliffjumper’s body. It pained Noah to see him this way, even more than it had back then.

He knew there was nothing either of them could do to fix this, not now and not in a month. They were gonna be in limbo until the Decepticons made landfall, and Cybertron would still be dead. But the more he thought about packing it in and driving back to base, where Mirage would be trapped under the same roof as the rest of the Autobots’ and their shared grief, the worse it sounded.

Maybe there wasn’t anything Noah could say to fix this. But then again, they’d already done enough talking.

“Hey.” Noah patted Mirage’s chestplate. “Let’s get outta here.”

He looked up in time to catch Mirage’s faceplates going slack with confusion. “Huh?”

“Let's go home,” he pressed. “Ma’s been asking for you and Kris has been buggin’ me nonstop about this movie he wants you to watch with Keanu driving a school bus or something.”

Mirage gasped, scandalized, as he hid a shitty grin behind one hand. “Nah, it can’t be! No way! Is the model Autobot suggesting we play hooky?”

“Fuck you, man,” Noah laughed, shoving him away–which should’ve been as effective as shoving a brick wall, but Mirage moved with his hand, leaning back obligingly and making Noah’s stomach do an embarrassing flip. “I’m serious! If Prime needs us, we’re a comm call away. ‘Sides, weren’t you the one betting Bee that you could make the drive back in less than three hours? You might need the practice to cash that in.”

Mirage narrowed his optics. “You’re trying to manipulate me.”

“Yeah,” Noah grinned. “Is it working?”

Mirage pretended to glare for a couple more seconds before sighing a very heavy, Optimus-like sigh. “Well, duh.”

He fell forward and transformed around Noah, returning to alt mode with Noah back in the front seat. Mirage waited long enough to buckle his seatbelt before taking off for the road, their trek through the untamed underground just as bumpy as the first time but without the frantic, breakneck pace.

Mirage didn’t speak again until they’d leapt out of the treeline and hit the slightly smoother stretch of dirt road leading down the mountain. “By the by, I know you weren’t just slandering the name of Speed earlier, masterclass of suspense and action set pieces—”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. You can just say you have a crush on Keanu, you know?”

#miroah #rise of the beasts #rotb #transformers rotb #transformers #mirage #noah diaz #ant writes

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