felixfellow:

bibliotecaria-d:

felixfellow:

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He didn’t remember.

He didn’t remember why his mask looks like a Decepticon symbol when everyone around him wore the Autobot one. He didn’t know why they feared him, but his sheer size and strength filled in some of those blanks soon enough. That, at least, wasn’t a mystery long.

He didn’t remember why the Autobot scientists swarm him after every battle. They asked him questions about his reformatting that he didn’t have the memories to answer, although he would if he could. They grumbled that he was being uncooperative, but the Autobot Second came to speak with him once, calculating optics locked on his face, and Tarn tried to explain that he just didn’t know any more. The knowledge was gone, if he’d ever had it, and an uneasy swish of static fills his mind when his mind searched for the missing memory banks.

Prowl told the scientists to stop harassing him. He also touched Tarn’s forearm, less a reassurance than a careful measure of personal contact that nonetheless made the massive tank like him just a little. “He’ll be here soon,” the small Autobot told him, and Tarn’s fuel pump skipped a beat.

Tarn sang that night in his guarded quarters, songs he didn’t know the lyrics for but still expressed his happiness. He would be here soon. Tarn had spent a hazy length of time on Messatine, defending the clinic from attacks by Decepticons who claimed to know him, who claimed he was a traitor. Bewildered, head strangely empty and pained, he’d returned to the Delphi Medical Clinic every time a little less sure he belonged there. Ambulon’s jittery fear around him didn’t help. First Aid’s quiet suspicion and sidelong threats were easier to deal with, if not understand. But he had welcomed Tarn back, waiting at the main gate, visible through the glare off the ice. Mostly working on a datapad, always responsible and constantly ready to check Tarn’s health, just as when the tank had first woken up under his care.

Tarn had left Messatine under heavy guard and in chains he didn’t remember how he’d earned, but he had taken him aside before the Autobot ship launched to return to Cybertron. Those insanely talented fingers had slid over the planes of Tarn’s mask, blue over purple, and Tarn had gratefully leaned into the caress.

“Why?” he’d asked, and he hadn’t even been sure what he’d been asking about. About the betrayed hatred in the D.J.D.’s optics when he faced them across the battlefield, or the terror on Ambulon’s when they encountered each other, each walking the halls late at night, unable to recharge for the dreams of emptiness that now haunted them.

A small smile had answered him, a tad mad but mostly satisfied. “Because I was abandoned here to create a solution out of nothing but desperation. I found the solution they didn’t expect, and now they don’t know how to deal with the results.” He had reached up, hands bringing Tarn’s mask down to meet him, and Tarn’s hands had slid around to cup the smaller, frailer, far more beautiful mech’s helm in turn as the gentle pressure of a tongue slipped hot and weirdly, tenderly possessive over where his mouth lay. Under the mask, Tarn’s lips had parted as if he could feel the kiss.

Blue optics had closed. Tarn’s own, red and afraid to miss even a moment, had watched greedily until he stepped away, leaving Tarn straining after him. “Don’t worry. They’ll have to transfer me back to the main hospitals after this. I’ll see you again, my Tarn.”

The claim made his spark flutter even now, and he sang for joy that his love would come for him. In the morning, the guards — respectful as ever but wary as anything — asked him if he knew other songs he could sing. Any other songs. Anything but the wordless anthems he’d crooned.

Since he didn’t entirely know what he’d been singing in the first place, he said no. They found him someone to teach him more appropriate music.

“Be good,” he had ordered before the Autobot ship took him away from Delphi.

Tarn didn’t remember being bad.

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