fateandfortune

Knock Out's EM field instinctively pulses out the glyphs for safety/acknowledgement/forgiveness, even though he knows humans can't detect it, and settles instead for the gentle rumble of twelve cylinders beneath her hands.

"No need for apologies," he replies carefully. "As you said, I don't know. I'll have to learn."

She loves the rumble that gently flows beneath her hands, a sign of the life within him that she still just barely understands. Understanding isn't required to appreciate though, and she is so very glad that he's alive and safe. For now.

"You shouldn't have to," she tells him tiredly. "You shouldn't be here. You don't deserve this."

"It's not about deserving," he refutes, and his tone suggests a frown even without a visible face. "You don't belong here either, whether this is your world or not. Not with things like... this. All of it."

He pauses, because that's a train of thought he's not keen to navigate right now. "I know it seems less likely now, but... there is still a chance that this is a Porter mishap. We know its glitches can last a week or more, based on past incidents."

It's a thin possibility, and they both know it. But Knock Out offers it with practicality, not unkindness. They won't pin their hopes on it, but neither should they completely dismiss it just yet.

Time enough for that later.

"So we can try to wait it out. See if there's any other way to confirm what's going on. I have the GPS coordinates for where De Chima's supposed to be, if you want to go anyway and be sure."

He's letting her choose, heedful of their barely-cooled argument where he'd removed that option from her. Not an apology, perhaps, but acknowledgement.

It's more than most people have given her in her life. She doesn't need an apology when his actions speak louder than the words possibly could. One can offer apologies and cite changed ways that are actually set in stone.

"We've come all this way already," she begins after a moment of consideration. "If you're okay with going, we might as well. Because... honestly, I don't have any other ideas."

If this isn't the Porter, if they're stuck here in this twisted version of the world, she doesn't know what to do. The mutants here won't know her, she has no human friends to rely on, and she can't even begin to guess at how they might get back to the world they'd shared. It's scary to admit but she isn't going to put on false bravado with him.

"We can go," Knock Out agrees, though like Rogue he isn't actually sure what they'll do once they arrive, if indeed his maps have not lied to him and the city doesn't exist.

"It's about nine hours," he advises after a quick check. It will put them back on the interstate, but it's through the mountains. Scenic, at least, though he suspects neither of them may in the frame of mind for it. "But certainly doable today. We'll get there before sundown. I'll swing us south to pick up Route 360 so we don't miss anything," he added, naming the main corridor that ran through De Chima.

He made a mental note to find them an ATM too, as Rogue would need additional funds and supplies. Knock Out didn't say as much right now, not when she was still coming down from her fear's towering heights. He would, with or without telling her in so many words, continue to moderate as many of her stresses as he was able.

She's glad he agrees because at least now they have a plan. For the next nine hours, they know what they're going to do. That buys them time to figure out what will happen in hours ten or eleven.

Standing slowly, she uses him for balance without putting too much of her weight on him — that seems rude somehow, and she tries never to be rude to anyone. Bits of grass and gravel stick to her knees but are brushed off easily enough, though she comes to the conclusion that, if they're really stuck here, she'll definitely need more clean clothes soon. And gloves, because without the nanites... Well, it's good she's been careful already since their arrival.

She moves to open the door again but her hand stills above the handle. "I really am sorry, Knock Out. I didn't mean to yell at you like that." A brief pause. "I did when I was angry, but not after. I love your natural form and I'm sorry you have to hide like this."

"Apology accepted," the medic answers, even though he'd hardly have expected one over something that was ultimately minor in the scale of things. But if apologizing made Rogue feel better, then he was fine hearing it. Injecting a bit of cheeky humour into his tone, he added, "It's fine, I'm used to far worse aboard the Nemesis all the time."

But then more seriously, he amends: "We both have to hide, for now. But at least we're not doing it alone."

---

They return to the highway and drive east, course set, and under the bright summer sunshine and the cheerful zip of passing cars, Knock Out once again takes control of the conversation to fill the hours.

"--laying there on the medical berth and he starts ranting at me: 'Can you imagine my horror?! There I am, minding my own business, when my arm just falls off!'" Knock Out parrots, doing an admittedly decent impression of Starscream's gravely vocal register before adding an insulted huff of air through the dashboard vents. "As if I'd have been so careless as to send him out with faulty welds! Naturally I tried to talk him into an upgrade, but all he wanted was his old arm back on, which he didn't even have the decency to bring with him. Beyond recovery, he claimed! The thing about Starscream, Rogue, is that he swings wildly between the most engaging, silver-tongued liar you've ever met, and not being able to bluff his way out of a mesh bag. This? Was not a silver day..."

Every few hours he stops them at somewhere quiet and out of the way, so Rogue can stretch and refill her water bottles. They leave the rolling hills and enter the mountains, the highway winding through valleys and skirting peaks, overlooking long drop-offs that go down hundreds of feet. The roadway is clean, well-maintained, and light on traffic both commercial and not. Honestly it's a pleasure to drive, and despite the circumstance, Knock Out is at least enjoying that part of it.

---

The sun is low but still comfortably above the horizon as they pass through the south suburbs of Richmond, the last major city between them and De Chima's location.

But no outskirts of the familiar city appear as they continue down Route 360. Small townships and petite communities, but De Chima simply fails to materialize. Knock Out slows, considering, and pulls into the empty parking lot of a church. It seems they need a new plan.

At least we're not doing it alone. Those are the words that sustain her through the long hours of driving, that knowledge that neither of them is facing this by themself. While she'd never have wished this on him, she trusts him, considers him one of her best friends, and is so very grateful he's there with her. If she'd woken up in this world by herself and learned what she has...

Her DNA was instrumental to the Sentinel Program taking down mutants using their own powers. No matter what it takes, she will not allow anyone to use her like that again, even if it means making sure there's no DNA left to experiment with. If the world goes down in flames again, it won't be her fault.

Listening to Knock Out's stories helps to pass the time in the best way. Little by little, she learns more about who he used to be and what his old life was like, information she'd only gotten before on rare occasions. For him to share so much and so readily feels like a real treat even despite their circumstances. She doesn't share stories of her own, instead showing her engagement by asking questions and offering commentary on the antics of the beings who had played such pivotal roles in his life.

It's only when it becomes clear that De Chima truly doesn't exist here that Rogue realizes how little hope she'd had for it. Instead of a crushing blow, it's a quiet confirmation of what she'd already known. This is their life now. Unless by some miracle the Porter grabs them back, this is it.

The empty parking lot is a blessing, an unexpected haven for them to try to figure things out. But where do they even start? Sighing heavily, she leans her head back against the seat. "We can't keep going like this. You need to rest."

"I'm all right for a while. Taking recharge every night is... convenient, but not strictly necessary. I once did a straight deca-cycle of surgeries during an Autobot offensive on Engore VI. Three weeks of non-stop sonic shelling, I thought my audials were going to fall off my frame from the whine of them. That was a long shift."

Knock Out relays it lightly, even though he'd been punch-drunk with exhaustion by the end of it and Breakdown practically had to pour his energon ration down his throat for him. No need for Rogue to worry. He could do with a good stretch to work some crimps out of his struts from 24 unbroken hours of driving, but that's not an option in such open terrain, so close to communities, to the chance of being seen.

Priorities.

"You need to eat again. I imagine breakfast is wearing thin by now. Let's find an ATM so I can get you some money, as promised."

There's a feeling of hopelessness that's been settling within her, eating away at everything else in tiny increments, encroaching so slowly she almost didn't notice it. But then suddenly, there it was, threatening to drown her while bringing forth old insecurities from dusty corners where they'd been hidden.

Knock Out is so much stronger than she is. He can physically handle so much more than she can, and he doesn't need frequent stops for food or a bathroom. He isn't being hunted yet either, so... How long will it take for him to realize she's nothing more than a burden? How long until he decides she isn't worth the effort and leaves her behind? She won't even be able to blame him when he does.

Her breath catches and her heartbeat speeds up as her anxiety sparks anew, but she shifts in the seat and takes deep breaths to force her body to calm the hell down. "You're right, I could use some food," she agrees, keeping her tone even and casual. "Thanks."

Knock Out's sensors, always running, detect the change in her biometrics... but he incorrectly assumes it's a delayed reaction to finding out that De Chima doesn't exist, and he doesn't want to draw further attention to that.

He consults his telemetry once more, a map of their location popping up on the screen inset to his dash, as he weighs the wisdom of backtracking into Richmond. Given that their unspoken consensus seems to be in staying out of major cities, that seems like something avoid, and yet continuing on Route 360 would only take them closer to the coast. The coast meant higher population density, with more eyes both electronic and living.

What they really needed was somewhere to lay low at until they could put together some firmer plans.

First thing was first: money. His engine started again, shifted into gear, and headed back down the road in the direction they'd come. He could stop at Mechanicsville, stay on the 295 Bypass, and skirt around Richmond's city limits. Mechanicsville was large enough that his alt mode shouldn't stand out unduly, but small enough to not be under heavy surveillance.

He hoped.

Outside a gas station, Knock Out pulled up snugly to the curb. "Here," he said, and a long thin cable -- not unlike the one he'd extended to charge the cellphone -- came coiling out of the dash. He instructed Rogue to plug it into the machine and not 30 seconds later the ATM was spitting out crisp twenties with cheerful beeps for her to take.

"And now, fair lady," he pronounced with flair as they beat a speedy retreat from the station, hoping to cheer her up. "What do you feel like eating?"

Edited 2020-02-13 02:43 (UTC)

His trick with the ATM is... incredible. Quick and easy and, she hopes, near untraceable. She'd somehow forgotten just how terrifying it was to need and have nothing, her comfortable life in De Chima suddenly feeling like a lifetime ago instead of just a day. Now, thanks to him, she at least has the means to buy what she needs. Mostly.

The hefty dose of flair he puts into his words has the intended effect, bringing forth a smile that, while tired and worn, is genuine.

"Honestly, sugar, I think I'd rather just stop at a store and pick up a few things," she admits, already running through a mental list of the new things she needed. "I'm guessing you've never been inside one before?"

"I haven't. I just know them from television and movies," he replies. He'd loved Earth media since arriving on the planet, long before the Nemesis made orbit, and indulged in it frequently. It was one of the reasons he'd had so little trouble integrating himself as an imPort. He'd even sprung for cable when he and Riptide had built the Cybertronian-scaled housing in Jeopardy.

Fleetingly, and because it was easier than dwelling on the fact that there was a good chance he'll never see it again, Knock Out laughs to himself while imagining that whomever came to inhabit that building after him would find his DVR full of recorded criminal dramas and reality court shows.

Another quick data consult and he directs them to a discount store chain, one that sells a little bit of everything. There are only a handful of cars in the parking lot, most eschewing these smaller establishments for larger supercenters, but it works better for them.

It's not the best store in town but it'll serve her purposes for now. A few food items and basic necessities from here and maybe a stop at a thrift store soon for some clothes. They'll be better able to stay off the grid this way, and she'll have a better time of finding what she needs.

Rogue offers Knock Out the chance to come along, of course, and not just because she'd rather not be alone. If he's watched tv and movies then he'd probably enjoy getting to experience things like this firsthand. Taking a small plastic basket inside, they wander the aisles with purpose. Toiletries, a hairbrush, a very cheap-looking baseball cap. A loaf of bread, jar of peanut butter, and a single set of metal cutlery. Surprisingly, there's a small selection of fresh produce, from which she selects some fruit.

She's just adding an orange to the basket when she pauses, frowning in distress at the many items that need to be cooked or stored in a refrigerator. After all these years, she'd put out of her mind how difficult it was to live on the run. Well, how difficult one could make it. A few pop-top cans go into the basket as well, items that most people would prefer to heat up before eating but which she knows are perfectly acceptable without doing so. There's no telling what the days ahead will bring them.

Like in the souvenir shop at the service station, Knock Out is clearly taking all the small details in for the first time. While he knows better than to openly stroll around with a look of wonderment plastered on the holoform's face, it's the small things: the quick flit of fingertips over the material of a hanging sweater, the quiet examination at the shelves of canned goods and sundries.

Not because it's new to him, but because it's familiar.

He's not a warbuild; his spark wasn't brought online during the war like others had been. Knock Out had been alive almost a million and a half years before Cybertron fell into strife, and lived on two different planets in that time. He'd had a full range of civilian life. And even though this was nothing like the sprawling markets of Tesarus and Praxus, it evoked the same reaction. It was strongly, startlingly domestic.

Something that Knock Out had wondered, more than once, if he'd ever get the chance to feel again.

Scrap. He had no time to be maudlin, not in their current predicament. It seemed disingenuous in any case, when Rogue was so obviously struggling to come to terms with being here. Outside, undetected, Knock Out's EM field wavered in something like chagrin.

He spots a rack of backpacks on the wall, picking one in a neutral colour and bringing it to her in mute suggestion. "Will this help?"

Edited (it ate one of my sentences) 2020-02-14 05:14 (UTC)

From just a glance or two at the way he's examining things, Rogue decides to ask him along for any and all of these trips in the future. Whatever the reasoning behind such an examination, she doesn't get the feeling that it's for a bad reason, though she'll try to find a way to ask him about it later. Make sure she's reading the situation correctly before moving forward. The very last she wants to do is put him in a position to be uncomfortable.

She's examining the small rack of jeans for sale when he brings over the backpack, the suggestion of which has her smiling with actual sincerity. "It'll be great," she assures him. "Thanks, sugar."

Adding a pair of jeans to her near-overflowing basket, she takes the backpack from him and announces, "I think this is good for now," before turning to head to the register.

The checkout line is short and they're processed through without any fuss, and with Rogue and Knock Out each carrying a bag out to the parking lot, they leave the store without anything going amiss. Setting the holoform's bag onto his passenger seat, he mimes climbing in to let it dissolve.

They have no driving plan, so Knock Out focuses on the most immediate necessities, and once Rogue is settled as well, he pulls back onto the road and heads south, away from the larger cities where security will no doubt be tighter. But he's not angling for any of the major interstates, instead picking his way along two-lane highways, and once they've left the flow of traffic from Richmond's radius behind, he seems to take on a specific aim.

An aim which is confirmed when he bumps his tires gently over the driveway to a roadside motel, stopping in front of the vacancy office and letting his motor go quiet.

Knock Out doesn't say anything about what they'll do next and Rogue doesn't bring it up either. It feels nice just to drive for a while... though after a bit, she realizes that he does have somewhere in mind after all. She waits to see where they end up, but it's not where she'd ever have guessed.

"Why are we here?" she asks him quietly, not at all comprehending what he might be thinking. It hadn't even occurred to her to ask to stay at a hotel, so why would he bring them here? She doesn't even have to think about whether she wants to stay there tonight — she absolutely does not, no thank you.

"I thought you could use somewhere more comfortable than my rear seat to sleep tonight," he answered. "They take cash - I checked. It's out of the way, and not on any major routes. The reviews aren't even terrible."

"You really thought this through," she murmurs, staring at those neon lights with trepidation and feeling like they're heralding her doom. She used to like lights like that; they were so different from the little southern town she'd grown up in, signaling a bigger world ready to be explored. Now she knows that they just serve to hide things, covering up the stars in the night sky and casting the world in color to cover up the darkness.

She doesn't want to do this. She doesn't want to be alone, even with only a dozen feet between them, because what if she wakes up and he's gone? Maybe taken, maybe of his own free will? She isn't ready to be on her own again, not in this world, but... what if that's what he wants? Or what if he just needs some time alone? They've been together all this time, perhaps he's getting sick of her being such a burden for all these long hours.

The various thoughts and worries whirl around her mind like a messy tornado, leaving a trail of destruction in the normally ordered system, but after a long moment of silence, she nods.

"I'll be right back."

Something disquieted settles a little in him when Rogue says that, because she had been so upset by his apparent lack of understanding the need for caution earlier that he had been wary to make this second attempt. Hearing her take his suggestion in apparent stride - and unaware of her true thoughts on the matter - reassures him that he isn't inadvertently putting her in more danger.

"All right," he agrees when she says she'll return.

It takes a great deal of concentration to keep her movements smooth as she steps out onto the pavement and walks to the office door. Her hands don't shake as she opens it and goes inside, smiling at the older man behind the counter and asking for a room. The transaction goes smoothly enough and she's even able to engage in polite, pleasant conversation while she pays in advance and registers under a false name. It occurs to her that its pure luck he doesn't ask to see identification; another hurdle to overcome.

Putting on a convincing but utterly false facade of moderate cheer, she heads back out to Knock Out, waiting until she's settled in her seat again before speaking. "All set. I'm over on the far end, second to last."

Knock Out obediently pulls around to the room in question. There's a plastic lawn chair set out in front of the room's window, and the paint on the door is chipped, but the rooms on either side of her appear empty.

Inside, the room is dated but clean, with all the usual accouterments of motels everywhere: two double beds, a dresser, a bar fridge and a microwave, and a television. The bathroom is small with white and blue tiles, but the shower head looks new. An air conditioner takes up the back wall, turned off but with a printed paper taped to the wall with instructions and an earnest assurance not to mind the first few thumps it will produce before getting going.

Knock Out sees all this in periphery - through the door when she opens it, through his scans that tell him the internal dimensions and major objects placed inside. He runs his usual debugging on the holoform, smoothing out snags of code that come from an imperfect program, but it will be a while before it's ready to go again.

"Take the cellphone with you," he says, as she retrieves the bags of items they'd purchased a short time ago. Effortlessly, he drops a singular contact into its memory for her. "I'm right here if you need anything."

The cellphone feels like a brick in her hand but she holds on tight, giving him a smile and a nod as she gathers up her stuff. "Thanks, sugar," she says with a gentle pat to his dashboard. "You make sure to get some rest."

Lord knows he deserves it.

Heading inside the room, she locks the door behind her and sets the bags down on one of the beds, forcing herself to methodically unpack everything. Items are removed from wrapped, tags removed from clothing, and a simple sandwich made from a slice of bread and some peanut butter. It tastes like nothing as she eats it, staring blankly at the wall and very pointedly not looking at the window. Will he still be there if she looks? She hasn't heard the revv of his engine but—

No, she can't spend the entire night waiting to hear the sound of him leaving. She can't.

She turns on the television, flipping over to some mindless infomercials for kitchen appliances and setting the volume as loud as she dares — she doesn't want to disturb anyone who might check into one of the rooms beside hers. The air conditioner is turned on as well, those jarring thumps followed by the humming white noise of chilled air being pushed into the room. The effect combines to cover up the ambient noise from beyond these thin walls and she finally begins to relax.

Relaxing isn't a good thing.

As she lets her guard down, the fear comes rushing back in, like water spilling into a sinking ship. The terror of not knowing what waits for her tomorrow and whether she'll face it alone, the overwhelming crush of guilt for somehow dragging Knock Out into this, the panic of not yet understanding all the factors at play here. Her hands shake as she gathers up a few items and moves to the bathroom, avoiding looking at her own reflection as she brushes her teeth and washes her face. Her hair is brushed and then pulled back into a braid in the hopes of minimizing fallout. When she's finished getting ready for bed, everything is neatly packed away into the backpack, which is set at the end of the bed she curls up on. She's still in her normal clothes, still wearing her shoes, ready to run at a seconds notice even if she doesn't know where to.

Ten minutes later, she's holding the backpack in her arms, clinging to it and shaking in the darkness that's illuminated by the television and bits of neon filtering through the curtains. Tears burn their way down her cheeks as she begins the rollercoaster of crying, then calming, then panicking and crying again. It's a vicious cycle that repeats again and again as the hours creep by and she refuses to look out that front window. In the dark of night, it's better not to know this now.

It's one of the longest nights of her life because she does know what's out there for her now. She knows what the Sentinels will do if they find her, what the lab will be like where they'll lock her up. She knows how much it will hurt to be so completely alone, abandoned by someone who means so much to her... and she knows she won't hate him for it.

Eventually, she drifts off into an exhausted slumber, waking again when the sun rises and brightens the room to something that isn't quite so scary. In the light of day, she groggily pushes herself to keep going, washing up and changing before cleaning the room on autopilot. Even though it's been so many years, she still knows how to wipe down a room, using the few supplies she'd picked up the day before with efficiency. She has another sandwich for breakfast, eat bite settling in her like cardboard-flavored lead, and then, with a resolute sigh, she steps outside the room, bag in hand, to face her fate.

Once Rogue has retreated into the motel room for the night, and Knock Out picks up the sounds of the television on, the thud and rattle of the air conditioner, he relaxes as much as he dares. For the moment, she is secure. He sets proximity alarms for the immediate area and cycles into a lower power mode.

Rogue is not the only one alone with her thoughts.

His next steps are businesslike and practical: he sets an algorithm to monitor media bands for keywords like mutant and Sentinel and a half dozen others. He combs through the last five years of news releases and public statements from the government, building a predictive analysis of the most likely areas where monitoring would be high and security aggressive. Unsurprisingly, the higher the population center, the higher that likelihood. He rifles through every witness account and unsecured source to try and determine just what capabilities the Sentinels have, but so much of it is locked away on military servers that he doesn't have access to, and is wary of trying to hack into without proper comms protocols.

But once the pragmatic tasks are taken care of, Knock Out's attentions turn to ones more disconsolate.

He pings out on every frequency he can think of, Decepticon and Neutral alike, wordless markers requesting confirmation and lain in with the glyphs for identity and searching. He tries Earth-based codes that they'd used, leftover carrier waves from the Grid long defunct, even the amnesty channels on the ephemeral chance an Autobot would pick it up. He'd take even Ratchet's deadpan grouchery over the silence.

Please respond, his pings say over and over, disappearing into a void with no echo. Please respond.

Eventually he lets them taper off, then stop.

Knock Out never quite makes full recharge - dozes, really, to use the human term. His self-diagnostics tell him it helped - physically, at least - but he doesn't feel any better for it, and worse for the hours alone. He dismisses the HUD popup politely reminding him that he hasn't eaten recently, and then in a move of spite, nulls the command line so it won't come up again barring critical levels.

He feels pettishly, plaintively better when the motel room's door opens and Rogue is there.

The morning is dewy, the parking lot pavement damp. A fine mist covers Knock Out's paint and his windshield, but the ground underneath him is dry - he hasn't moved all night.

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