liesdontfindyou | Open Post

Connie freezes automatically at the contact, but makes the conscious effort to relax again.

And then she smiles, with a genuine sense of relief.

"I am. Thank you," she says. "I should have come to you sooner, but hindsight makes a genius out of all of us and all that."

"Nah, you're right, you couldn't have known how I'd react," she says. "Seeing everything...all the evidence...it unlocked something in me. But you didn't know if that would happen."

"I hoped it would," Connie says. "I came close, a couple of times, to walking up to you and telling you, because you deserved to know. You deserved to find out from a friendly face. Hence..."

She gestures vaguely at where dog-tags would hang around her neck.

"I can't imagine what it was like for you, to actually see it, of course."

"I doubt you could, yeah," she says, muttering again. She doesn't intend to elaborate any further on that, though, at least at this time. The whole thing has left her with a drifting feeling, unmoored in her own time and space. "Thank you for doing it. It was brave."

"I owed it to you to try. I owed it to everyone to... do all of this." That's what she's been telling herself. Once she saw what was going on, she didn't have any choice but to do something.

It's been weighing heavily on her and some of that weight is still visible in the way she holds herself.

"You didn't owe me," Tex says. "The Director is the one who owed this."

She draws back a half step, balling a fist. She cares for him, she can't deny it within herself, but he's being an incredible asshole and she wants him to be punished somehow. Not by the law. By herself.

"We'll get him. One way or another, we'll... we'll do something," Connie says, sounding a little surer with every word.

She starts to pick at her hand, but stops herself this time.

"First obstacle is this mission. I don't suppose you know if you're on the roster, the way you usually are? They've locked down those files tighter since they started noticing my... poking around."

"I am," she says. She'd received the mission briefing earlier, when they thought they were going to be going ahead with it. "Separately from everyone else, as usual."

"As usual," Connie says, shaking her head slightly. She has a thought, but whether that thought is feasible is another matter entirely. "How able would you be to... stray off your intended orders, a little?"

"You really think he'd do anything about it?"

The question is asked with a bitter edge to her tone. She can do whatever she wants.

Connie holds her hands up a little.

"Just checking. I don't know the length's he'll go to. But... that's good," she says, "because my next idea was that we rendezvous out in the scrapyard and you come with me. Lot harder for my contact to try and make me leave with him if I have someone with me, and if I'm with another agent... I look less like I just took off to the Project and more like I was acting in their interests."

Tex nods slowly, thinking.

"I think that would work," she says. "We'll have to make it as quick as possible, though."

"I can do quick. If he starts acting up, you have my express permission to threaten him so we can make a quick exit," Connie says, and there's almost a hint of a joke in her voice. "He could do with a little reigning in."

Tex snickers. "One of those, huh."

She glances toward the door.

"We probably better get back to our usual routines. We don't really want them to notice this is happening."

"Yeah, one of those," she says with a quiet laugh. "Right, I should uh, I should probably try and get in what actual sleep I can. I'm... usually awake around the time you came to me tonight," sleep has been difficult to come by for a while, "so whenever we need to talk, feel free to come around."

"All right." Tex nods, steps back to let Connie leave the room ahead of her, and then heads to her room.

She remembers now what happens when she ends up in there—she connects herself to the port in the wall and sets herself on sleep mode. She's resting and recharging, but not in the way a human would. From now on, she's not going to forget this is what happens. She's not going to end up remembering unstrapping her armor, taking a shower, and snuggling down in bed. She doesn't even know how those memories replace themselves in her head. But that programming is broken now.

Connie falls back into her bed with a thump that she's surprised doesn't wake the still heavily sleeping South on the other side of the room.

Despite how drained she is, there's a new energy in her; after days of feeling like she was here on borrowed time, she, for the first time, has an ally on board. A gamble finally payed off and now, there's a plan that might actually work.

It's the most alive she's felt in months.

"I used to be Air Commander," Starscream mutters, hunched over with a canister of fuel in one hand, nursing it with a vengeance. Long gone are the sleek, sweeping wings of an F-15; he may be the same colours, but time and necessity have forced him to take the alt-mode of a YSS-1000 Sabre, its engines mounted on his wings a far cry from the once iconic Seeker profile. The leap in their technology would be remarkable, if it wasn't for the fact it was organics'. His paint is faded and chipped, and that too is a far cry: a far cry from the once proud Second in Command of the Decepticons. Starscream is on his own.

"And now," he hisses, "Here I am, drinking this slag they call fuel!"

There's a quickly squashed urge to throw the fuel canister in frustration, but instead he stays his hand, hissing lowly. The last time he had caused a racket, he had woken half this ship, drawn far too much attention. It's not a risk he can afford to make. Here, Primus knows where in the galaxy, trapped in a human starship's hangar, blending in is survival. It's only luck that they found him, and only luck that he was awake enough to scan himself a new alt-mode to hide in time.

"It's just my stupid luck that nobody even thought to go looking for me. Not even to confirm I was dead! Primus knows how long it's been! Useless, worthless scrap-eaters-"

It's one of those increasingly common nights where Connie can't quite get herself comfortably off to sleep. She's taken to walking the halls to pass the time and wear herself out, though where she ends up is a dice roll at best. She's gone to parts of the ship she didn't even know existed before, just by wandering.

Tonight, though, she finds herself heading down to the hangar.

The brightly coloured fighter had become sort of part of the scenery down there; a curiosity, but one that many people had stopped thinking about unless they were staring it in the face.

It's... literal face, apparently.

She has to do a double take when she reaches the hangar entrance. The Sabre being out of place isn't a total surprise, but the fact it appeared to no longer exactly be a Sabre at all and was... drinking fuel? Certainly was.

"What the fuck?"

It's a minor miracle Starscream doesn't jump enough to whack his head or wings on the ceiling. He wheels around, null rays instinctively powering up, looking for the threat- Only for optics to land on one of the smallest humans he'd ever seen.

"...Slag."

His weapons power down, their whine ebbing to nothing. Ugh. If he left one of them a smear on the floor, more would investigate, and then he'd be without shelter or fuel. But he can't let it leave! If it outed him to the rest of the ship... Ugh! He's going to have to think fast. The exalted Decepticon Air Commander, reduced to this!

He hikes his wings up higher, a threat display in Seeker-speak, trying to look more aggressive than ridiculous despite the fact he's hunched over with his knees up to his cockpit.

"I could ask you the same!" He snaps. "How dare you interrupt my refueling!"

Connie isn't entirely sure that she isn't dreaming. She even pinches herself, just in case, but that hurts, so she figures that this is actually real.

Which doesn't make it make any more sense.

Blinking, she says, dumbly, "...so that's where all the fuel's been going," as if there isn't anything weirder about this situation than that, as if there aren't a thousand more questions and only a single answer.

There's a sharp roll of the optics that nearly moves Starscream's entire head with it. "Yes, fine, I am partaking in this sorry excuse for fuel. Not like your kind is giving me much of a choice! Do you have a problem with that, human?"

A pause, and then he snaps, "And stop staring! You would think your kind has never met Cybertronians before!"

"Met... what before?" Connie says, not entirely sure why she's still stood there and not running to tell someone that something is very strange. "I... don't think we have? We only recently met... fleshy... aliens...?"

Every new word of the sentence feels more absurd. Right, that's why she's not running to tell anyone. This is ridiculous. No one would believe her.

"Cybertronians! Ugh." Another roll of the optics. "Are you ignorant? How can you not know? We Decepticons were on your world in- Sometime in the past!" He's not sure he can remember the way humans figure out their 'years', but he's not going to admit that.

He leans forward a little, towards her, and narrows his optics. "And you are not going to tell anyone I am here."

"Like anyone would believe me if I tried."

She tries to wrack her brain for anything resembling the clearly living being in front of her, but the only things she comes back with are old cartoons that have a vague resemblance, but are more than likely nothing to do with what she's seeing. She's read a lot of old human history, and a lot of old documents she should never have had access to.

Whatever he's talking about, it pre-dates it all.

"Not as far as I know, you weren't. Whatever you are we... you are not common knowledge." Which isn't entirely surprising, even if he is telling the truth somehow.

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In the MoI Hangar, Pre-Bjorndal

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