(ofdarkstorms) ▤ = falling asleep on them .
As his optics flickered online, the ancient’s first instinct was to reach for his scepter - was he under attack? Had the humans overtaken him while he recharged? Altogether too often, her gleaming face in his scattered dreams had been replaced with the burning eyes of the Prime as he reached out to seize the Fallen’s faceplate. Immediately, he began a scan of his surroundings, before realizing his location. He had, at last, escaped.
The chamber, he noted, was the medical bay of the Nemesis - these raised berths and empty shelves he had spent more time and futile hours with than perhaps any part of this ship save his throne. He sat, tipped back against the surface of the wall, on one of the lower berths. With certainty, he knew, no Autobot would come to murder him in his sleep - he no longer had to run.
His staff lay on the floor close by - he always tracked its location, to some degree of consciousness. It was one of the few things that were truly his, and after these many thousands of years it was practically an extension of himself. It raised an inch from the metal surface of the floor, responding to the gathering call of his thoughts, but subsided again as he relaxed, vents hissing softly as the tension in his hydraulics was released.
Not yet fully aware of himself, he studied the readouts of his own subsystems - weakened, but stable - a little stronger, perhaps, than he had been the fateful night before during which the Autobot forces had finally pinned him down. Had it - he had escaped, with - a seeker. Darkstorm. Yes.
In the moment his memory of her loaded, he registered a particular weight upon his left arm and shoulder, and a glance revealed the seeker still present - in recharge as well, it would seem, her smaller frame slumped against his. He considered movement, but indeed, time now was no commodity. Let her rest.
He gazed upon her battered form, scanning the damage that had been dealt to her armor, and the mended areas that had been so painful to repair the night before. She was, for the moment, stable. The ancient let his optic covers slide shut again, but did not sleep, settling for quiet contemplation.
It was odd to him that, after years of persecution and fear, in a medical bay where a generation of children had perished, low on energy almost to the point of collapse, with a seeker he had known for not a full day recharging on his shoulderpad,
he felt strangely at peace.
