Work Text:
It's cold on the surface. Bit of a weird thought to have, honestly, considering everything else he could be thinking about and gawking at tonight, but it is cold. Maybe it's just that he's spent too much standing directly next to a furnace. Maybe that's just how the sky is.
Bee isn't saying any of this out loud consciously, but his new pink friend—companion, Elita, shoots him a sideways glare that means he probably said it anyway.
He pauses and shuts his intake—despite what people say, he's not stupid, just absent-minded, and by now he knows when someone's about to yell at him for talking too much—not meeting her optics.
Orion and Dee are talking in hushed tones across the way, the violet light of what must be the planet's electromagnetic field scattering across their faceplates. Bee taps his fingers on his new kneeplates, wishing he could just keep talking. He knows Steve wasn't actually alive, but he still misses the company. Steve was a good listener.
His new kneeplates actually reflect light. The material they're made of is shiny, not painted, and entirely strange to him. The metal of his body is cold.
It's so strange to think it hasn't even been a solar cycle since all of this began. They'd found Alpha Trion and everything had just kept changing—including their bodies. Bee is, of course, incredibly grateful to Alpha Trion for giving them the cogs of his sacred siblings, but he can't help but feel strange about it. It felt like graverobbing, like a mistake. He's just a trash bot, stuck so far below the sky he'd started thinking stars were a myth—surely granting him the cog of a prime was a mistake. He can't help but wonder what his born cog would have looked like.
He's seen transmissions of Micronus Prime, and… well. He's seen the sparkless frame of Micronus Prime now, too. The prime's frame was rounded, with distinctive teardrop shaped pedes. Bee stares down at his own pedes, their shape mirroring the prime who's body he'd stolen.
Sharply, he tucks his legs beneath his hips and leans back, staring up at the sky to avoid thinking about that. It made him feel weird.
A beat of silence, and his brain persistently refuses to move on from thinking about the dead prime. The stars glitter overhead.
"I've never seen stars before," Bee blurts out, before he can stop himself. "Have you?"
Elita doesn't respond. He doesn't look over at her, but he's sure she's rolling her optics at him. He's mildly surprised she hasn't smacked him yet.
"There're a lot more of them than I imagined. I mean, I knew about them from some stories my old mining crew would tell—I think someone mentioned the energon veins looked kind of like them—but I guess I just sort of assumed they'd be, like, farther apart?" Bee rambles, not pausing for breath. "Especially because some people say they can see pictures in them, you know? They all just look random to me. I don't think I could ever—"
"How long were you a miner?" Elita interrupts him.
Bee freezes, taken aback by the question. "Wait—what?"
"Said how long you were a miner," she repeats. "I never oversaw your crew."
"Um," Bee says. He's not used to people talking back. "Not long, I don't think? It was a while ago, before they—uh, before they decided I would work better at my current assignment. Which is great, by the way, it's—it's super fun, and I don't think they actually have anywhere else to reassign me, which is good, because for a while there I was starting to think I'd never be able to hold a job—"
"Slow down," Elita replies, and to his surprise, she actually sounds mildly invested in the conversation. "The question, B-127."
"You remembered my name?" Bee blinks. "Wait—sorry, yeah, the question—um, probably, like, a stellar cycle or so?"
Elita snorts. "Do mecha not remember your name? You're very memorable."
"I think they remember my presence more than my designation," Bee says thoughtfully. "It's a little boring, honestly. I like yours better."
"Picked it out myself. First of my name," Elita says, a hint of pride in her voice.
"Didn't pick mine," Bee responds, then adds: "One-hundred twenty-seventh of my name."
Elita snorts again, and Bee allows himself to think she was actually laughing at his joke for a moment. He smiles, carefully sneaking a glance at her. She's smiling, too, and it's a little sarcastic, but he'll take it. Primus knows it's been a long time since he's seen anyone else smile. None of his friends in sublevel 50 have intakes.
"How long have you been mining?" Bee asks. "You seem like you're very good at it. I didn't know punching people was a mining skill. Maybe that's why they reassigned me. I'm not very good at that."
Elita's expression sours. "Since I came online. I always thought I'd make it to the top. I was so invested, and… Primus, for what?"
Bee frowns softly. He's not exactly sure what to say to that, at first—after all, his job was fine, he had nothing to complain about, except. Well. The furnace was quite hot, and sharing the space with his friends was hard. And sometimes they forgot to drop him energon, so he'd have to power through a shift with his joints locking up. And his servos were constantly stained with soot and grease, which also made their way into his joints and slowly drove him crazy. And he'd never seen the stars, either. Or talked to anyone—at least, held a conversation—in what felt like stellar cycles, though he didn't have a way to keep time down there.
But he couldn't complain. He's sure there were worse jobs, bots who had spent their lives in worse situations. He'd learned there were always worse jobs by now.
"Did you have any friends?" Bee asks softly. He's not sure where the question came from, but it passes his lips without his processor's input, which is a common occurrence. "You don't have to answer that, I'm so sorry, it just—"
"No," Elita interrupts. "Don't think I did. Never thought I had time for it. Not like those two. There was always the job, and I'm the best at the job. Plus, when bots can go offline anytime there's a mine collapse… it gets in the way."
A brief pause. Silence settles between them as they contemplate their states of loneliness. Bee starts to think maybe they're not that different.
"I always had bots around, though," Elita adds after a moment. "They were friendly with me. Orion most of all—that idiot would try to befriend a data chip if it narrated so much as a sentence to him."
"Hey, living proof," Bee jokes, gesturing to his faceplate. Elita snorts again.
"I would rank you slightly above a data chip," she concedes. "Don't go spreading that around, though."
"Who, me? My lips are sealed. Never said a word in my life." Bee mimics welding his intake closed. The effect is somewhat dampened by the sound effects he's making.
"I have a reputation to maintain, B-127, I'll find you," she says, cracking her knuckle plating.
"Yes, you will, and I'm not trying to start something with a mech who took Orion to the ground the second she opened her optics," Bee says, throwing his servos up placatingly. "And I told you, you can call me Bee."
"Oh, right." Elita pauses. "You know, we're in the same sector now. For work."
Bee pauses too, his hands stilling. "I forgot about that."
"Orion got me demoted." She scowls. "But he also saved Jazz's life. And I'm not that sparkless."
Bee looks up at the stars. "Knowing what we know now… I don't think Orion got you demoted."
Elita stills, staring at him. He glances over at her. "What?"
"Elaborate."
Bee shifts, uncomfortable. "Um, I—I didn't really think before I said that."
Elita still stares at him, her blue optics piercing. "Yes, you did."
"No—no, I—" Bee starts to insist, cutting himself off to rephrase midsentence. "I just meant—I didn't think Orion saving someone's life would reflect poorly on you, or him, or—well, we know what Sentinel's priorities are, now, you know?"
She keeps staring at him. He keeps rambling. "Like, it wasn't your fault the mine was unstable, right? And it wasn't your fault Orion defied your orders, but it also wasn't a bad thing to save Jazz from the collapse. So why—why would you be punished? I mean, we know now, why—I guess, Sentinel lets Darkwing do whatever he wants to keep the miners feeling bad about themselves—but it's—it's not Orion's fault. He didn't get you demoted."
Bee can't meet her eyes. He's starting to panic a little bit—years of instinct screaming at him not to complain about anything fighting with the fact that he knows the truth, now, and his spark won't let him forget it.
"You seem… kind," she finally says. "I never considered any of that."
"I don't think they liked that about me," he says quietly. He's embarrassed for some reason, curling in on himself like he's trying to hide. His new plating doesn't move the same—his chest is smooth and clinks against his knee joints as he shifts. The champagne yellow suddenly reminds him of dull, lifeless metal compared to his soot-stained paint job.
"Do you like your new—new frame?" he blurts.
She doesn't answer, so he keeps talking. That's becoming something of a pattern. "I think yours is really cool—I mean, the two wheeler thing is so fast, and you maneuver so well. You definitely seem worthy of the power of a prime, you know? Very regal, and all that. But we haven't really talked about it since then, so I figured I'd ask what you thought about it, and—"
"Do you like yours?" she asks, in lieu of a response.
His intake valve immediately clams up. Bee's body is so cold, and he doesn't recognize his reflection, but it feels so strangely freeing, and the transformation is power and rushing energon, and he's got the cog of a prime in his chest, given to him by Alpha Trion, though surely it was meant for someone else, and it's out on loan, and he'll go back to his paint chipped, scarred servos soon, and—
Elita smirks. "Guess I found the button that makes you finally shut up. You're really not used to people talking back, are you?"
He jumps a little. "Uh—sorry, what?"
"Orion sure knows how to pick 'em." She sighs and rolls her shoulders. "Do you like your new frame?"
"You first," Bee says, surprising himself with how defensive he sounds.
She actually huffs a laugh at that. "There you go. Just as evasive as all of us. Miners never ask questions. Even fewer of us answer them. I'd bet a fortune of energon chips it's the same on the mythical sublevel 50."
"We don't have to be miners anymore," Bee replies, rocking forward. "We can ask and answer, if we want."
"Do you want to?" Elita asks.
"Not really," Bee says, "but sort of? It's weird."
"Start simple, I guess." She shrugs. "We sort of started with the biggest questions. A lot to think about. You ask me a question, I ask you a question, we both get to answer. Think of it as… I dunno, an act of revenge against Sentinel, or something."
Bee doesn't want to admit to himself how gratifying that sounds, so instead, he asks, "what's your favorite color?"
Elita gives a startled huff. "Oh—okay, that simple."
"Hey, back to basics. I'm good at instructions."
"Noted." She frowns, staring intensely at a rock as if her answer is carved on its side in a foreign language. "Blue. Color of good energon. Never really thought of it before, actually. Yours?"
"Yellow," Bee says, without hesitation.
She arches an optic ridge at him.
"Yes, yes, I know it's the same color as I am, okay," he replies, "but I like it. Whenever I had fresh yellow on me, I felt nice. Safe. It meant I had the supplies for paint. Plus, it's fun to look at, and you never get lost in a crowd! Only a handful of bots are yellow, 'cause it takes a lot of upkeep, and I know that, but, you know, it was nice to think about every night before—anyway."
"I like your reasoning more than mine," Elita responds, still frowning. "Annoying. Ask another question."
They talked for a long time, asking meaningless questions until the constellations shifted and both of them fell into recharge.
Maybe Elita-One was alright, after all. Maybe she didn't hate him for eternity. Maybe she didn't think he was a complete moron. She at least thought he was better company than a data chip, and her favorite color was blue.
It was a nice start. Even if his frame was on loan, and all of this felt like it'd shatter when he woke up in the morning.