"Redemption"  Part 8
by Ivy Bohnlein


     A chill seemed to sweep over his metal skin as he drew closer to the
Iacon repair bay, but he assured himself that it must all be in his mind.
Right?  When he entered, Whiz and Certiorarius were both absorbed in study
at one of the terminals.  They looked up at the sound of the door - though in
the Quintesson's case, it was more of a shifting of awareness from the face
in front to the one in back.
     "What news, Rodimus?" he hissed from his death's mask.
     "Our plans are moving ahead on schedule.  The search party is ready to
leave tomorrow morning, and things seem to be under control in Darkmount,"
Rodimus replied.  "Have you two found anything?"
     Certiorarius' faces shuffled around, and soon his scientist aspect was
reporting again.  "Not as much as we would like.  They're all showing an
excited state of response in a few areas of their neural cortex, but the
cause and method of transmission are still unknown."
     Whiz looked up slowly.  "We need Sky Lynx.  He is the original victim,
and is at the root of its transmission.  He should give us the answers we
need."
     "If all goes well, we'll have him for you soon," Rodimus nodded.
     "All unaffected Primitives we studied were sent to Earth, to avoid
exposure to Sky Lynx's converts."  Whiz met Rodimus' optics directly.  "Syke
was among them, along with Ramhorn and Kebal."
     He recognized what she was really telling him, and nodded gratefully.
 With Syke protected from harm, and Arcee on a different planet, maybe
disaster could be avoided after all.  "Thank you, Whiz."
     "There is still the problem of what to do with those we suspect are
affected.  Should we brig them pre-emptively, or wait, and possibly allow
them to escape and oppose us?" Certiorarus asked.
     "Jailing a few of them without cause may just touch off the others.
 They'll see it as an act of persecution," Rodimus said with a shake of his
head.  That had been Galvatron's mistake - he had placed all of his
Primitives in the brig together, affected or unaffected.  Soon, the Predacons
merged, and Predaking was able to break them all out.  They'd joined Sky Lynx
immediately after the escape.
     And that still wasn't the worst of it.
     "I agree," Whiz said, interrupting his thoughts.  "But we can't allow
them to run loose, either.  I placed some small tracking devices on them, but
was unable to do anything more active in our defense."
     "That'll be enough for now," Rodimus nodded.  "Good work, both of you."
 He turned toward Certiorarius with a significant look.  "You might want to
take a rest."
     After an initial look of surprise, the Quintesson picked up on the hint.
 "Yes Rodimus, I would.  Call me if my assistance is needed, Commander."
     Whiz's gaze was unfocused as she pulled herself briefly from her
analysis.  "Yes, of course," she said vaguely, then returned to her study
again.
     Rodimus waited, gazing around the room carefully.  No patients were
awaiting treatment, and their past bodies had been placed behind a
nondescript curtain in the corner.  A powerful protective forcefield
surrounded them, insulating the time travelers from the effects of standing
too close.  The voice of the Matrix still tugged at him in a way that nothing
could mute, but he steeled himself to push that call aside.
     Not yet.  Maybe not ever again.
     Finally, when the only sound to break the silence of the room was an
occasional beep or whir from the medical machinery, he decided that he'd have
to be the one to drag Whiz from her concentration.  Positioning himself
carefully between her and the only door, he prompted, "Whiz?"
     She looked up quickly, turning her chair to view him in surprise.  In
that unguarded moment, her face lost its iron composure, looking almost
natural again.  "I... I didn't realize you were still here."
     He smiled.  "I know."
     "Did you require some assistance?" she asked haltingly, obviously trying
to steer the conversation in a more familiar direction, to put it in a
context she understood.  Unfortunately for her, he didn't intend to let that
happen.
     "No," he told her lightly, his smile broadening.
     Surprise and suspicion mingled in her optics.  "Then what is it you
want?"
     The grin reached the height of its infuriating charm.  "Whiz, we're
going to talk."
     It was like watching the door slam over a vault.  At one moment, her
face seemed alive again; in the next, it had turned to stone.  "I have much
more important things to do," she replied icily.
     He shrugged.  "You always do.  But it's a leader's prerogative to decide
what takes priority."
     Her eyes narrowed.  "I would advise you to make controlling your
obsessive curiosity a top priority.  That, or getting the vacant smile off
of your face."
     The grin slipped a little.  Not much, but enough.  "I'm not just curious
 I'm concerned."
     "Well," she said snidely, folding her arms, "I am truly touched.  But
I've survived this long without your concern, and I don't need you to rush in
with a belated offer of help *now*."
     He flexed a fist at his side.  How did she always manage to push his
buttons?  "I actually care about you.  I know it doesn't make sense, since
you've put so much effort into driving everyone away, but you've always been
my friend."
     "Pretty words," she sneered, "But the time for being *friends* is over."
     "Then why?" he asked, unable to hold back the rising heat in his voice.
 "What happened to that?"
     "Maybe I just got tired of being your best friend without having one in
return."  Her gaze met his in challenge.
     He nearly exploded.  But he caught the torrent of angry words before
they escaped him, and forced himself to stay silent.  He had set out to keep
her off-balance, but instead she was pulling his strings like she had so many
times before.  She'd maneuvered him right back where she expected things to
be, with a few comments calculated to hurt him most.
     And he'd fallen for it.  Again.
      With an effort, he swallowed his impatience and soothed his nerves.  In
a level voice, he informed her, "I'm not taking your bait this time, Whiz.
 If you really believed that I don't care about you, you wouldn't use it
against me every time I push for the truth."
     An unsure look flickered across her face, and he knew the tables had
turned.  Even though it was quickly replaced by cold determination, he'd seen
through her this time.  She still wanted to drive him away, but now he knew
better than to go.
     "If you cared for me so much, you would accept who I am.  You would also
respect my desire to be left in peace, so I can find a solution to this
catastrophe."
     "This solution is just as important to me.  *You* are important to me,"
he replied, spreading his hands in a gesture of openness.  "Talk to me, Whiz.
 Tell me what happened to you."
     "The same thing that happened to us all," she snapped, irritably rising
from her chair.  "Too much loss.  Too many friends dead, or turned to
enemies.  Too long waking up and wondering if this will be the day my luck
runs out."
     Rodimus kept himself between her and the door, a fact which wasn't lost
on her.  As she stopped on the other side of a lab table, he told her, "We've
all seen the same things, but none of us have changed the way you have.  None
of us have lost so much of ourselves."
     Her fingers pressed hard into the smooth metal surface of the lab table,
betraying the emotion she had trained out of her voice and face.  "Ever since
I arrived here, I have been treated as if some essential part of me is
missing.  Even those of you who know me, *this* me, have begun your chorus of
demands - asking in all of your sensitive glory, 'Whiz, what happened to
you?'.  Well, I haven't lost myself.  I've grown up.  I've had to.  But just
because we're back in the past doesn't mean I can flip some switch and become
young and stupid again."
     "Being in the past, with all of the reminders of what we were like -
it's just reminded me of how things used to be.  I've realized how much I've
lost by letting you turn away.  But when I started looking for the old Whiz,
I could see her.  She comes out when you forget to keep up your shell."
     "So," she said bitterly, "It makes it easier to look at it as a shell?
 Maybe then you can justify trying to break me - but let me warn you, the
only thing that's about to crack under your incessant prodding is my
patience."
     "I've seen life in you when you're surprised," he told her.  "I've seen
sympathy in your optics, and it shows me that you can still care.  If you let
yourself."
     She just glared at him.  "I don't need *you* to care for me."
     "I want you to start caring about yourself again," he said quietly.
     "Fine, fine."  She sighed in exasperation, her hand moving dismissively.
 "You're the expert.  I'll take your advice as long as it'll make you go
away."
     "That's not what I want," he growled, feeling the irritation bubbling up
again.  "I want you to talk to me.  Remember, we used to do that.  We used to
talk about everything.  What happened to that?"
     Her mouth turned upward in a cruel mockery of a smile.  "I stopped being
naïve."
     "Naïve?" he demanded, "What's so naïve about being a friend?  What's
naïve about trusting someone?"
     "I did trust you."  A note of something different - something real -
entered her voice.  "But that's over."
     "Why?  What'd I do?" he asked, suddenly confused. 
     "Do?" she repeated.  With a bitter little laugh, she answered, "Nothing.
 You did nothing."
     His confusion grew, and he retorted, "Dammit, Whiz, I'm just trying to
understand, and you're talking me around in circles.  You say this has
nothing to do with me, but the way you treat me says something else.  If I
had nothing to do with this, you would have talked to me about it a long time
ago."
     Her expression was eerily distant.  "If you cared about me, you would
have asked a long time ago."
     He had to hold himself back for a moment, until he was sure he could
speak without shouting.  "I did.  This is just the first time I haven't let
you bully me away before I got a straight answer."
     It was a relief to see that she was almost as frustrated as he was.  Her
hands were locked on the table in a vise grip, and her body stood rigid with
tension.  They'd either get to the truth or kill each other, but either way,
this would end here.
     "This is going nowhere..." she began.
     He cut her off immediately.  "Only because you're not cooperating."
     She continued without skipping a beat, "...and it's not going to.
 That's not bullying, that's logic."
     "How long is it going to take to go somewhere, then?  Another few
million years?  Look, we don't know what'll happen to us when we leave this
time.  We may go on to a whole new future, or we may cease to exist
completely.  But I will be *damned* if I'm going to walk into that unknown
without ever finding out what I *did* to you.  This could be our last chance
for forgiveness, Whiz.  Don't waste what little time we have left."
     "Speaking of wasting time," she growled, "We didn't come this far into
the past to try patching old wounds.  Let me get back to solving the *real*
problem here, and I'll let you get back to playing with your little pink
friend."
     Rodimus took half a step backward, looking at her in incomprehension.
 "What does Arcee have to do with this?  I'm worried about *you*.  You're
just as much a person as she is."
     The pure bitterness in her voice surprised him.  "She was more of a
person to you even when she was dead."
     "*What?*"  It was the first thing - the only thing - that came to mind.
     "I'm sorry," she said icily, trying to take advantage of his surprise to
get out the door.  "It seems I overstepped myself."
     Rodimus stopped her with two hands on her retreating shoulders.  "Oh, no
you don't.  You're not going to throw something like that at me and then
*leave*."
     "Aren't you full of surprises," she growled, shrugging off his hands and
turning to face him again.
     "You're surprised that I wouldn't let that kind of comment go?" he asked
in disbelief.
     Her voice turned almost accusing.  "You've always let me go before."
     He was tempted to follow that line of questioning, but it would only lead
to another spiral of tangents without getting closer to the real heart of things.
Come to think of it, that was probably exactly what she had in mind.  Not this
time, Whiz.  "I'm not going to settle for anything less than the truth.  Make 
things easier for both of us and just tell me."
     "The truth?" Her optics flashed.  "The *truth* is that I was always
there for you.  The *truth* is that it was never enough.  Because the *truth*
is that you were so busy wishing that Arcee hadn't died that you never
noticed me dying right in front of you."
     Unbalanced by her accusation, he took a step backward - both mentally
and physically.  "But... of course I missed her, Whiz, I loved her.  I still
love her.  But not to the exclusion of anything else.  If I was too wrapped
up in grieving, you should have *told* me.  Not done... this... to yourself."
     "I have only done what I had to do," she told him.
     "And I want to know *why*.  Why did you have to shut yourself away like
this?  Why is *this* what you had to do?" he demanded, poking a finger toward
her chest.
     "Do you think I'm proud of what I am?" She stalked over and tore back
the curtain, giving him a good look at the bluish forcefield behind it.  Her
past self reposed there, a gentle smile on her face even in unconsciousness.
 "What do you think she'd have to say about me?  About what I turned into?"
     "She'd probably ask the same thing I'm asking - why?"
     Whiz sighed deeply, and her shoulders sagged as some of the anger seeped
out of her.  "You're probably right."
     "So?  Answer us both, Whiz," he said quietly.
     Her response was hard to make out.  "Because I couldn't live with it
anymore," she murmured.
     "Live with what?" he pressed.
     She raised her optics to look directly into his, and without either of
them moving, the distance between them grew smaller.  "With you."
     He hadn't expected to be so surprised.  After all, he'd always
suspected... just never wanted to believe it.  "So it was me."  His voice
raised a little without him intending it.  "All this time spent denying it,
but it was me.  You *lied* to me, Whiz."
     Pain stabbed across her face.  "It was you, but it was never your
fault."
     "Not... my fault?"  He studied her face for some kind of hidden motive,
but for once, found only honesty.
     She turned away from him again, looking at her past body locked away in
the forcefield.  "Aren't we all responsible for what we become?"
     He shook his head.  "You don't have to deal with it alone.  What started
all of this?"
     "It started when Krystal died."  Whiz didn't turn back toward him, so
her voice took on an eerie hollow quality as it reflected off of the wall.
 "I tried to save her, to keep her with me, but I couldn't.  Age was the only
thing I couldn't protect her from.  She knew when I'd reached the limit of
what I could do, and by then, she was ready.  Ready to leave me."
     The loss in her voice surprised him, especially after the way she'd
acted the day before.  "But why are you treating her this way now?"
     She chuckled darkly.  "You're getting ahead of me.  You see, Krystal
left me with a few parting words.  'Take care of Rodimus,' she said."  Whiz's
voice turned back bitingly on itself.  "'I know you love him', she said."
     Rodimus frowned, his optics narrowing as he tried to figure out what she
was aiming at.  "We were all friends, we took care of each other."
     "But she was right," Whiz said distantly.
     "Of course she was," he said blankly.
     Her chuckle had a high, almost hysterical edge to it.  "Now I see how
you went for so long without realizing."
     Somebody knew what she was talking about, but it wasn't him.  "Uh,
realizing what?"
     She just sighed.  "I don't suppose I can blame you.  I didn't know what
she meant at first, either.  I just took it at face value.  But still,
somehow I felt like there was more to it.  Like it had struck some chord that
I didn't even realize was there."
     Rodimus just studied her back in confusion.  Where was this going?
     Whiz continued to speak in a low, regular voice, almost as if she were
telling someone else's story.  "It wasn't until the Matrix was torn from you
that I understood.  I saw you lying there in front of me on a table, torn
apart inside and out, and I got scared.  I realized that if you died, I might
die too."  Her voice grew stronger, more passionate.  "And I didn't even 
care.  I wanted them to *pay* for what they did to you, no matter what
happened to me.  You meant more to me than my own life.  That's when I knew
for sure, and I was afraid I'd lose you before I had a chance to tell you."
     He waited, but she seemed to be finished.  "Tell me what?"
     She turned her head to regard him over her shoulder, and for the first
time in a long time, she smiled.  "Sometimes you can be so dense."
     This was starting to get irritating.  "What?"
     She finished her turn and stood facing him directly.  "Rodimus, I love
you."


[TBC]

*Note: Some of the lines from this and the following part of "Redemption" are based heavily upon RP
 between myself and Rodimus Prime@2k5, whom I thank for the permission to use/modify poses and quotes.*

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