fateandfortune

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.

Seeing him waiting there— A weight lifts from Rogue's chest and suddenly she can breathe a little easier. He's still here. For whatever reason, he's still here and she hasn't been abandoned again.

There's no hiding the exhaustion in her movements, the dark smudges under her eyes and the slightly lower timbre of her voice, but her smile is bright nonetheless as she approaches him. With a fond pat on his hood, she greets him, "Morning, sugar," before popping the door and sliding inside. It feels like home, and the tears that threaten are ones of happiness. What a nice change it makes.

Knock Out would not look much better, if he were in root mode and their physical tells were of the same sort. It had not been an easy night for either of them, whether they knew it or not. Far from the supposedly restful separation that each had intended for the other.

The affectionate tap on his hood swells amity in him, the reassuring gesture held over from their days sharing an address in Jeopardy. After that first meeting, she always made it a point to greet him when she left in the mornings and when she returned from her daily outings, if he was there. The purpose of having an Earth-based alt mode might have been to blend in, but it had also become a logistical necessity while living there, and none of the other housemates had been so diligent in acknowledging him.

It had made him feel more normal, and less like an outsider, even among fellow imPorts.

"Good morning Rogue," he replies, and his field bends around her briefly before rebounding. His tone is warm, carefully stripped of any of the previous night's anxieties. They'll need to come up with some semblance of a travel plan for the day, but first...

"Let's see, step one: find a drive-thru for coffee?"

It was old habit to show her affection for him in that way, the months since she'd moved away from Jeopardy having no effect on the deeply ingrained instinct to do so. Little signs like that were comforting for her, and she hoped for him as well. She'd continue doing it until the day he told her to stop.

"Yes, please," she agrees with another smile and a sigh of relief. "You're so good to me, Knock Out."

She honestly doesn't know what she'd do without it, a thought which she refuses to dwell on. That churning pit of anxiety and fear cannot be allowed to resurface in the light of day when he might be able to notice. The burden she's placing on him is far too much already.

"Did you manage to get some rest?"

Knock Out laughs richly at her assertion, his engine firing with its usual resonant sound, reversing out of the parking space and then out onto the road. The summer morning is once again bright and welcoming, deceptive in its peacefulness, but for the moment he'll take it.

"No, I've just seen you without it," he teased. "One stray look in my direction and I could practically feel the coolant curdling in my lines."

There are a number of coffee shops once they reach the nearest small town, and they pass easily through one for Rogue's ordered beverage. A strip mall parking lot provides a vantage point overlooking the road and the ramp down to the highway while they work out where to go next.

"I don't think we should go much north of here," he says, and the dashboard screen blinks to life, showing the east coast and the large cities clustered there. "But other than that, I'm open to suggestions."

His teasing earns him a scrunched nose in faux disgruntlement; really, she's amused by his impression of her, and admittedly it isn't far from the truth. She and Hux had been similar in that way, the both of them requiring coffee for the well-being of others, and the thought makes her miss her friend dearly. The pang of loss isn't as brutal as others have been though; she'd always known that eventually they would be parted and she'd prepared for it in her own way. Perhaps he'd found her letter by now, or maybe that was still yet days away. Either way, she was glad she'd left it for him, and she feels guilty for not having done the same for KO.

Except it turns out she hadn't needed to.

The way he fails to answer her question does not go unnoticed but she doesn't bring it up again just yet. Maybe later, when they've settled things, and if it comes up in conversation. Her own answer to it isn't something she'd like to share, so best to leave it alone for now.

She sips at her coffee for a moment, contemplating the screen and weighing options before speaking. "Are there any unused industrial areas nearby? If we could find a large enough warehouse away from populated areas, you could stretch out for a while."

It's something she's been contemplating, remembering the early days of the way when they'd stayed in abandoned warehouses outside of major cities. Close enough for supply runs but far enough away that no one noticed the people squatting within.

A stretch sounds absolutely divine at this point, and Knock Out hums his agreement. "Let's see what we can find."

The dash screen changes, flicking through information pages at a dizzying rate of speed as he searches the area. Unbeknownst to Rogue, those type of locations were something he was also familiar with seeking out, so he knows what to look for. News articles, property receipts, land surveys, company letterheads all go scrolling past until he eventually he settles on a choice.

Some twenty minutes later has found them at the fenced gate of an old factory, the painted name on the side too weathered to read. Several sets of old train tracks run in front of the silent brick behemoth, but they've long since grown over with weeds, unused. It looks as appropriately abandoned as they could hope for. Knock Out rolls forward gently until his fender presses against the locked gate, applying a steady pressure -- carefully, so as not to scratch his paint! -- until the padlock gives and the gate swings open. He reverses just briefly enough to push it shut again behind them.

It's not hard to find them an open bay door to enter through, and Knock Out drives them into the main building. Inside, the air is speckled with dust and particulate where it catches the morning sunlight streaming through the high windows and down from the skylights, some of which are broken. Though it's not immediately obvious what kind of factory this had been, it had almost certainly been something for manufacturing, and the skeletons of stripped-down conveyor belts and other machinery sit quietly in the main space. There's an expected amount of graffiti decorating the walls and the support braces, but not a lot of loose debris on the floor. It can't rightly be called clean, but there are definitely worse states it could have been in.

Once Rogue steps out, he reverts back to root mode with a long, grateful ex-vent. Arms raised above his head, he works out the tightness built there in startlingly similar motions to human stretching, though with the added audible sounds of coils twanging and springs decompressing to go with it. He fusses with his front of his chassis for a few moments, making sure that the fence hadn't scratched his wax too much, and flashes her an artful grin. "Much better."

Only then does he notice that there are still shreds of corn chaff caught in the armor seams of his legs. Had Iowa really only been two days ago? Grumbling, he begins to pull them loose.

Looking the place over, she decides it wouldn't be a bad spot to spend the day — and the night. She's slept in far worse conditions before, and at least here they're out of sight and he can be himself for a while. It's clear from watching him move around that he's enjoying being in this form again, and she'd much rather consider his comfort over her own. After all, so long as they're together, she'll be just fine.

After thirty seconds of watching Knock Out try and fail to remove the reminders of their time in the cornfield, she sets down her backpack and waves her hands at his, shooing them away.

"You're just making it worse, sugar, let me do that," she instructs with fondness, tugging off her gloves and tucking them into pockets so they won't get dirty as she works. Her small hands easily grasp hold of the chaff and pull the pieces loose where he'd only managed to shred them further. With deliberate care, she tugs one piece free and then another, concentrating on not letting her skin touch him while she works.

Knock Out lets his hands fall to his sides with a huff, but obediently stands still so Rogue can work loose the pieces. Up close, it is more evident that the large sections of armor plating on his body actually weren't - they are comprised of dozens of smaller pieces, all interlocked with such impeccable precision that their seams are nigh invisible until the light strikes them.

But he seems to have a fine motor control over each piece as he followed her movements, each section of plating lifting slightly to expose a darker grey metallic underneath that gleams with an almost iridescent sheen. The movements also reveal delicate traceries of wires and gear mechanisms, but it gives her enough clearance for her fingers to grasp the corn tassel strings and pull them free.

"Mmph," he jolts just a little as she works at a stubborn piece of stalk that was pinched between two segments, and his plating flares out reflexively. "So that's what's been itching up against my protoform for two days."

It's beyond fascinating to get such a close view of his body and the intricate ways it works. She'd always wondered how his form managed to change so easily and now she can see how it would be possible, those smaller pieces able to rearrange much more easily than the larger sections they appear to be. And every time she gets a glimpse of the wires and gears and that metallic surfaces beneath... He's beautiful in ways she'd never before understand.

Not that she would tell him that. Knock Out might mean the world to her but he does not need any additional boost to his vanity.

When he suddenly moves, it takes her by surprise, his plating shifting faster than it has before that moment. One hand instinctively raises to press against the plating that seemed to come so very close to hitting her in the face, her adrenaline spiking from how the movement startled her— And then she's jerking away, almost throwing herself backward away from him, clutching her hands to her chest and staring up at him in fear. One second passes, two, and she's sending a prayer of thanks to whatever deity might be listening that her powers hadn't had time to activate.

"Knock Out, you have to stand still," she tells him firmly, struggling to keep her tone even and not shout at him as she had on the road. He doesn't deserve that but he doesn't understand what's at stake. "I don't wanna hurt you."

Rogue flings herself back from him so suddenly that his first reaction is something close to panic himself, thinking that he'd somehow closed an armor plate on her fingers and hurt her. The way she's holding her hands close to her chest only seems to confirm it, and his spark-rate falters until she speaks.

But not in pain. Fear, that's plainly evident, but the chastisement is not what he was expecting at all.

"I... hurt-- me?" he repeats, incredulously.

She doesn't think about how it might appear to him, the notion to consider it never even occurring to her as she battles against her racing heart to calm down and explain what he doesn't understand. It's hard, so very hard when she's so terrified of causing him harm, but she tries.

"My mutation is in my skin," she says, not moving one step closer and keeping her hands right where he can see them tight against her chest. "That's why I'm always covered up."

That much he did know -- that was why he could touch her with the holoform, but why she was so careful never to let her skin come into contact with him when they drove. But he hadn't realized it would be so instant, enough that the casual brush would frighten her so badly.

"All right," he cedes, and his plating has tucked down tight, apologetic. "I didn't realize. Nothing happened when you touched my handle the other night, or just now, so I thought it required something... more deliberate. I can get the rest of the corn bits, if you'd prefer."

"When I—" She'd forgotten about her slip-up, the brief lapse in caution that had been erased by everything that had followed. Of course, he'd be confused about the parameters that governed her abilities, anyone would be in this circumstance. Taking a deep breath, she releases her hands from their death-grip on each other and folds her arms over her chest.

With an apologetic tone, she explains, "No, I'll still help, I can wear my gloves in case it happens again. I'm sorry, sugar, I should have taken the time to explain, especially when we've been so close the past few days."

"I'll hold more still," he promises, though he thinks she'll likely wear the gloves anyway after a scare like that. His plating relaxes again from its held position, letting her resume working, and he does indeed keep nearly immobile save for the very slight flex of his torso where his vents are located.

"Although I admit, I'm surprised your ability would work on me, given how different we are. Even the healer imPorts said their powers would have no effect."

Not that he'd ever been seriously injured in that world to require urgent healing, but the topic had come up with a few people in passing.

She does put her gloves on before stepping close again, carefully removing each pesky piece of chaff that's still stuck in his seams. There's so much of it, she's sure he must have been uncomfortable the past two days from it all.

"I've never met anyone it doesn't work on," she says as she tugs on an especially long strip. "Even mutants who could turn their skin to metal." After a moment, she hesitantly adds, "But I've never actually tested on it on someone like you. I didn't have to before, the nanites gave me control of my powers."

And now the nanites were gone, along with the rest of the Porter world. Knock Out falls silent, platelets opening and closing for Rogue's now-gloved hands. He hadn't realized quite how much debris he'd picked up during their short trek through the cornfield until it was starting to make a small pile at her feet. What he wouldn't give for a washrack right about now...

"Is that something you can do? Test it?" he finally inquired. He wasn't overly thrilled about the prospect, but it bore relevance. As Rogue had said, they'd been inextricably close the past few days, and that was unlikely to change any time soon based on their predicament. It would be a smart thing to have confirmation on, if they could get it.

She pauses in her work, reaching up on tiptoe to grasp another piece between her fingers. Test it. Just the idea makes her nervous, but she has to admit that it would be better to know for certain. If for some reason her powers don't work on him...

"Yes," she says simply, tugging that piece and settling back on her heels. "All it takes is a few seconds of contact with my skin. Just two or three and I'd start absorbing you. Your energy, thoughts, memories. I'd end up with a whole copy of your psyche in my head that would never go away."

There's a clinical air to her words as if she's given this explanation a hundred times before.

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