Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chromedome woke up feeling empty. He was in a hospital, somewhere outside the Institute. He figured he should be worried about that, but he couldn't seem to raise himself to care. He felt hollowed-out.

Eventually a doctor wandered in to remind him that he'd been shot. Overlord. Of course. They asked if Chromedome needed anything and he shook his head. The medic informed him that he'd been brought to a hospital in Teledonia to recover and that he'd been accompanied by a supervisor, Axotomy. He asked if Chromedome wanted him to call Axotomy in, let him know that he'd woken up.

At the mention of Axotomy, Chromedome felt something. He wasn’t sure what, but it was a blip away from the hollow emptiness. He felt...cold?

Chromedome told the medic no. "I need some time to get my head on straight," he said.

The moment they were gone, Chromedome was up and out of his berth, pacing from the door to the window and back again. He felt fine physically—especially considering he’d just been shot. A bit of a helmache, but that was it. How long had he been out? Something must have gone weird with his chrono when Overlord attacked, because he couldn't pin down a date for any of his recent memories.

Chromedome paced, trying to bring sensation back to his emotions the same way he’d try to shake up his sensornet if his leg had fallen asleep. He thought about the fact that the medic had probably ignored Chromedome and was off fetching Axotomy already. He didn’t have much time to—

To what?

There was something on the tip of his tongue, there was water pushing at the levee, there was something buried under this unnatural stillness and Chromedome was pretty sure what it was.

It was about death. It was about him. Failing to die.

Chromedome wasn’t sure when he’d made the decision, but he knew in his spark that the decision was made. He wasn’t going to do mnemosurgery ever again. He was sick of it. Sick of living out the suffering of the dead and the living, of living with the guilt and shame of taking away his fellow soldier's autonomy. Sick of being alone. Of having a life so fragging empty that when he tried to summon up a single thing that brought him joy he couldn't manage it.

If Axotomy was coming, he didn’t have much time. On the second go-around, Chromedome recognized the emotion that stirred a little at the thought of Axotomy’s arrival—fear. That made sense. If Axotomy arrived and he saw Chromedome was well enough to walk, he might take him back to the Institute. Chromedome had to be gone before they got there.

He walked to the window and looked down at the street below. They was only three stories up. Below him, pedestrians hustled in clusters shielding themselves against the drizzle of acid rain as they went. There would be people in the hallways, people whose job was to keep patients safe. They wouldn’t like where he was planning on going. So, in the interest of subtlety, he threw a chair through the window and jumped.

He made a hard landing, but staggered to his feet. Alright, now he hurt. The surrounding pedestrians converged on him but Chromedome rolled into his alt mode and took off.

He drove through a few streets, taking corners like there was pursuit hot on his heels, but pursuit failed to materialize. Eventually he stopped and transformed back into his root mode. Chromedome listened for people beneath the sound of the rain on the pavement and followed those noises to a street market with thronging crowds. He boggled at the hubbub —he hadn't realized there was anywhere left in Cybertron where civilians wandered around open markets long into the evening—and then pushed his way into the crowd.

He was certain he looked peculiar—his face felt frozen and unnatural and he was limping from where he'd jarred his hip during the fall. There was no way he could pass his question off as mere academic curiosity, but there was always a chance that someone might feel obligated to save you from yourself. Chromedome decided to try a different tactic.

"Please, do you know where the nearest relinquishment clinic is?" he asked. The pair of shoppers he'd stopped stared at him, clutching their purchases tight to their chests. Like he was going to rob them. "Please, my best friend...he left me a note and I—I have to stop him," Chromedome begged. Lying felt easy.

It took three tries before he found someone willing to give him directions. He thanked them, profusely, and then hurried off towards his doom with all the haste of a mech whose best friend was about to do something very stupid. He’d had practice at that.

It wasn't until after he'd filled out his intake forms and made it to the waiting room beyond that everything snapped back into place. It was like a sense memory cued by something in the room, maybe way back from when he’d visited that relinquishment clinic with Prowl. The emptiness washed out and the fear rolled in..

There were three other mechs in the waiting room, all Decepticons. Most mechs who went to the clinics were Decepticons, he’d heard that somewhere. Chromedome sat down between them and hoped that someone would say something, that he wouldn't go wordlessly into the afterspark.

Chromedome was distracted from the mounting dread by someone crying in anguish. The noise startled him out of his seat, and he looked around, trying to place it. It was coming from one of the adjoining rooms. Chromedome looked back at the others. One of them shrugged at him, a minute movement of his shoulders. The other two were deep in their heads and didn't seem to see Chromedome at all.

There was a hatchway in the floor that led to a lower level, there was a hallway on that lower level and the noise was coming from a door to his left. Chromedome didn’t stop to wonder how he knew that.

His memories of the clinic he'd raided with Prowl were too sharp. His memories full of awful things that something might be happening to whoever was crying. Awful things they hadn’t signed a waiver for. Chromedome was through the door before he'd even begun to make a plan for what he'd do if that was the case.

Luckily, it wasn't a torture chamber or whatever nightmares his brain hadn't bothered to make tangible. It was a morgue. A morgue with an open coffin and a minibot, looking down at the greyed out body within in obvious misery.

Chromedome didn't know what to say, so he said the first thing that popped into his head. "The worse the death, the more painful the memories."

The mech looked up, startled. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Everyone calls me Chromedome," he said.

Maybe startled was the wrong word. Maybe the minibot was more suspicious than startled. "Why are you here?" he asked, optics narrowed.

"To do something about it," Chromedome said, offering the minibot his hand.

"What in the pits is that supposed to mean?" they asked. "Do something about it? About what?"

"I, um—" It’d felt familiar, like deja vu, like the thing you said when someone needed help. It’d felt like the right thing to say. Apparently not.

"Wait, do you mean him?" The minibot pointed at the mech in the coffin. "He's pretty far gone at this point, I don't think there's anything you could do for him now. Unless—" they squinted at him. "People don't say that. That's not a saying. ‘the worse the death, the more painful the memories’? People don't say that, unless they're mnemosurgeons."

"How do you know that? And also—"

"Oh, I get it," they said. "You think this is my friend and that I'm upset because he's dead. And you're offering to make me forget that my friend died out of some well-meaning but definitely freaky desire to make me feel better. Goodness. No. That would be a no and also a no. You will keep your hands over there and I will keep my brain over here and we'll all feel much better for it."

"That's not what I meant at all," Chromedome said, covering his face with his hands. "Jeez. What is this, an inquisition? I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that. It just popped out." Usually when he let his mouth run on autopilot it just said please and thank you and made vague comments about the war turning around sometime soon. He wasn’t sure why he’d somehow assumed that a morgue in a relinquishment clinic was a situation where he had prepared phrases.

"Mm-hmm." The minibot crossed their arms over their chest, looking very judgemental for a mech who was definitely not authorized to be in the morgue and had just been crying over the body of someone who was apparently not his friend. "So, say I give you a second chance to answer that question. What would you say?"

"I mean, it's a relinquishment clinic, why do you think I'm here? I was just coming over to make sure you weren't being murdered against your will," Chromedome said, rubbing at the back of his helm. "If you're not, that's good. Obviously I’m intruding during an emotional moment. I’m sorry for your loss, unless you actually don’t know this poor sap. I'll just go back out to the waiting room—"

"Wait, you're here to die?" they asked.

Chromedome wasn't sure what the right answer was to that question. He didn’t know the right answer to any of these questions. "That tends to be why people go to relinquishment clinics," he said.

"Why?"

He shrugged. "Didn't have anything worth living for. Didn't have anywhere else to go."

They looked him up and down and then walked over. "You need somewhere to go? I've got a place."

"I couldn't," Chromedome shook his head. "I couldn't put you in danger like that. I'm not dishonorably discharged, I'm kind of, you know...on the run. From the New Institute. You don't want to get mixed up in all that."

"You're sweet," they said. "Look, I'm not exactly a stranger to breaking rules." They swirled their finger around to gesture at the surrounding morgue. "And I'm old enough to make my own decisions. So why don't you trust me to decide how much trouble I'm willing to get mixed up in?"

"I don't know anything about you," Chromedome said. "Why should I trust you?" He did, he realized. Trust him. It was another feeling with no discernable source, no reasonable explanation. He didn't even know the minibot's name, but he trusted him.

"Touché. Well, my name is Rewind. I'm an archivist and an Autobot. But lately most of what I've been doing is...this." He spread his hands to indicate the morgue as a whole. "My conjunx is missing. I’m trying to figure out what happened after he disappeared."

"I'm sorry," Chromedome said. He couldn't imagine it. Losing your conjunx, not even knowing for sure whether they were dead or in trouble or had abandoned you. "If you wanted..." he didn't want to mess this up again, "I could stay with you for awhile and help you look?"

"Sounds like a deal," Rewind said, offering his hand to shake.

Chromedome was pretty sure they were going to find him eventually if he didn't go back to the relinquishment clinic. He wasn't sure if that was irrational, if it was paranoia brought on by the same mental weirdness that had led him to jump out of a window rather than try to leave the hospital by the front door.

When he let that detail slip out on the walk towards Rewind’s place, the minibot took his hand and looked so worried that Chromedome resolved not to bring up anything else about the Institute. He usually tried his damnedest not to be patronizing about minibots—they didn’t like it when folks tried to treat them like they were fragile. It was just something about Rewind that had his spark screaming for him to keep him safe. More mental weirdness. And from what little he knew of his new friend, Rewind seemed the obstreperous sort who’d dig himself into trouble trying to fix things if Chromedome let him.

Rewind led him to a block of apartments for minibots. His place was small—comically small once Chromedome had squeezed up the ladder and through the doorway. On instinct, he ducked as he stepped inside, narrowly missing hitting his head on a dangling ceiling light.

"Well, it's not really a safehouse built for two," Rewind said, "But it beats being dead, right?"

"I don't think anyone from the Institute would think to look for me here," Chromedome said. "I'm sure it'll be fine. So. Your conjunx. What happened to him?"

The answer was that nobody knew.

Rewind had apparently searched most of Autobot-controlled Cybertron already. As one of the only archivists in the army, he had a certain amount of discretion in where he chose to go. "There are cultural artifacts everywhere," Rewind said. "No matter where I go, there's going to be information lost in some other city-state, some other library, some other historical archive. We will never recover most of the knowledge and culture that was held before the war, which is—" he shrugged, "—heartbreaking. But convenient for my search."

Rewind had checked all the Autobot rosters, as well as a good number of Decepticon ones. He'd reviewed passenger manifests on outgoing flights and security footage wherever he could get it. He'd spoken to bodyshop and modshop owners, wondering if perhaps his lost conjunx changed his shape. He'd gone to Autobot command and asked for an official search party to be put together, only to be turned away when—

"Wait. You went to the Prime?" Chromedome asked.

"I thought they might care. Not because he was my conjunx, because he was," Rewind paused. "I forgot to mention. My conjunx is Dominus Ambus." He said it with the pained voice of a person used to having every conversation sidetracked by people's disbelief and starstruck babbling.

Chromedome fought down the urge to say something that ended with a question mark. "Okay, yeah. That makes sense that Autobot command might have been willing to join the search. I take it they didn't?"

Rewind stared at him for a moment, startled. Then he nodded. "They gave me a month of bereavement leave to put his estate in order and to look for him but....resources couldn't be spared to look for one person, even a person as important as Dominus. They said that either he'd been kidnapped, in which case we would be receiving a prisoner exchange offer, or else he'd been killed or had defected in which case there was no sense in wasting time searching. And that was that."

All of those routes of inquiry came up empty but Rewind couldn’t give up. Instead, his search expanded towards the morbid—checking scrap yards and morgues and relinquishment clinics, videos and tapings of executions and hollowings, casualty records from battles. "That's actually one of the things I could use your help with," Rewind said. "I've got these records piling up that I haven't had time to go through yet." He indicated a stack of unlabeled boxes and explained that they contained analogue photo negatives of the battlefield dead. When a battle was over, the medical workers who searched for survivors would photograph all the mechs who couldn't be saved, for their eventual identification. Both sides refused to take digital records from the other, for fear of cyberwarfare. So physical negatives would be made and sent to both sides by courier, the last honorable accord held between them.

"You need a UV projector to review the pictures," Rewind said. "I've got one, but I'm not sure if it works."

"Do you have any pictures of Dominus?" Chromedome asked. "I know who he is, but he was always a low-key public figure; I'm not actually sure what he looked like."

"You're sure you wouldn't mind?" Rewind asked. "The pictures can be gruesome. They're not people who died pretty deaths."

"I was a detective before the war," Chromedome said absently. "I worked homicide."

"Well, we're a morbid pair, aren't we?" Rewind said. "Guess I shouldn't have worried, since you're on the run from the you know," he wiggled his fingers.

"You can say ‘New Institute’. Though I'm not sure how you know it exists. Does being Dominus Ambus's conjunx get you into some inner circle?"

"Not really," Rewind said. "But if you're nosy and have all-access to Autobot records it doesn't take much pattern matching skills to realize that it exists. Whoever redacts files in Autobot intelligence is both supremely irritating and thinks everyone but him is an idiot."

"Do you mind if we don’t talk about the New Institute stuff?" Chromedome asked, rubbing at his helm. "It’s just...i ta lot, right now."

"Sorry, I'm getting carried away. I get carried away. Dominus used to say I had two speeds, backwards and fast forwards. How are you doing? You had a hell of a day."

"I'm not feeling much." Chromedome said. "I probably should be? I should be feeling something. Relief, if nothing else? But I'm just...here. And I'm not dead. My hip hurts a little."

"Why were you in the hospital?" Rewind asked.

"Oh. I got shot." Chromedome glanced down at his plating, perfectly smooth. "For a little bit there you could have put your fist through my internals. I was lucky, it must have missed my spinal conduit."

"That must have hurt."

"Not for long," Chromedome said. "I made it maybe a minute before I passed out. I remember the medic saying I was going to make it. And then I woke up today. Not sure how long they had me out, but I can't even feel the injury anymore."

He let Rewind strategize a bit about how to stay undetected—mainly staying indoors and off data networks. Rewind had a spare datapad that had a guest profile already set up, which they could use to communicate in case of emergencies. Rewind suggested they call it an early night. They'd decided it would be best if Rewind kept up his routines, so as not to rouse suspicions, so he'd be out to do his archival work at dawn.

They talked for a bit longer about Dominus, about Rewind's search and about his work, then settled down to recharge. Chromedome refused Rewind's multiple offers to sleep on the berth, pointing out that he was a guest and also that the berth had been sized for minibots and that Chromedome would have more space to stretch out on the floor. Rewind agreed grudgingly; Chromedome had the suspicion they might play out that argument every night until he left.

Until he left. Chromedome frowned, arms pillowed under his head as he looked up at the ceiling, listening to the gentle hum of Rewind’s fans spinning down. He’d only just gotten here but already that part of him that had always gotten attached too soon was singing that this was home. He didn’t like the thought of leaving.

The UV projector worked. He wasn't sure what had stopped Rewind from testing it out, he just had to flip the power switch and he knew within a few seconds that the bulb was working. But the records...he could see how the enormity of the task could have stopped Rewind from getting started. For his part, Chromedome was grateful to have a task to do. If he’d been left at loose ends he probably would have driven himself into a mental breakdown.

Each box was divided into two rows of five cases, and each case held a stack of sheets of negatives as tall as his hand. Chromedome went through the first stack quickly, pinning his reference photo of Dominus up beside the projector image. But he slowed down as the day wore on. It wasn't that the work was boring, though it was. Or even that looking at so many dead made him feel something sobering about the war; though there was a bit of that. They'd been insulated at the New Institute. Most of his brushes with the horrors of war had been second hand. No, stupidly, he kept being distracted by thoughts of Dominus.

It was a mystery, wasn't it? He'd always loved mysteries, back when he was on the force. Before you could solve pretty much any of them by cracking a guy's mind open. Dominus and Rewind were conjunxes but Dominus had vanished without a trace. It was hard to imagine that could have happened without either Dominus choosing to leave or someone choosing to take him away—someone with the resources to whisk him off without appearing on a single camera or being seen by a witness or anything else that Rewind could track. It felt like a conspiracy, but who would conspire to steal Dominus Ambus? And why?

He caught himself staring at the photograph of Dominus, trying to decide based on that single snapshot if he was the sort of mech who could deliberately leave his conjunx behind without a word in goodbye. That wasn't the kind of thing you could tell by staring at someone's face—Chromedome had seen inside enough heads to know a pretty face didn't predict a kind spark. But he found himself staring at the photograph anyways.

He wondered who had taken the photo. It didn't look like a press photograph, or even a formally posed one. Dominus had a fond smile on his face, a softness to him Chromedome wouldn't have expected. He sat back down on the berth and finally noticed the camera left sitting on top of the pile of boxes. Oh. That was a rather obvious answer to the question. Rewind hadn't mentioned that he did photography.

Chromedome picked up the camera and turned it over. The lens was cracked and there was a corner dented; he wasn't surprised when the thing didn't power on. Presumably Rewind kept it around as some sort of memento. Chromedome caught sight of the engraving and put the camera down, sorry to have intruded.

He left the camera out when he went back to reviewing photographs, not willing to commit the implicit lie in pretending he hadn't been looking at Rewind's things.

Rewind showed back up late in the evening. He closed the door so softly Chromedome might not have noticed him come in except for the breeze. He turned the projector off and watched as Rewind shuffled over to the bench and melted down onto it, stretching out his legs with a groan. Rewind leaned his head back against the wall and looked over at Chromedome. "Why did all of you tall people have to put things so damned far apart?" He asked.

"You sound like an old mech," Chromedome said.

"I am old. That's the problem with being short, nobody stops to think you might have joint pain," Rewind said with a wave of his hand. "I take it you don't know many other datasticks."

"I don't think I know any," Chromedome admitted. "Is that your alt mode?"

"Yeah, we're not so common anymore," Rewind said. "Back in the day all the rich sods had a few datasticks in their collection. Not so many datasticks being forged any more...maybe now that we've developed external computers Primus thinks we're redundant? Who knows." He shook his head.

"You okay?" Chromedome asked.

Rewind sighed. "I hate seeing dead people. I hate this. I hate everything about this." He looked over at the projector Chromedome had balanced on his lap. "Did you get it to work?"

"Yeah, but I didn't find anything. Could take me a few weeks to go through all of these, honestly," Chromedome said.

"That's fine, it feels like I've had them sitting around forever." Rewind pushed himself to his feet and wandered over to the berth. He bent to sit down and caught sight of the camera. "Oh," He said softly.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize how personal it was when I picked it up," Chromedome said.

"Don't be sorry, it's fine. It's a long time past." Rewind reached over and picked up the camera, turning it over in his hands.

"How did it break?" Chromedome asked.

"I dropped it over the railing and into a lake," Rewind said. "It was a whole story."

"Huh. Lucky you didn't get any sediment behind the lens then."

"Lens?" Rewind asked.

"Yeah, the lens is cracked," Chromedome said. "You must have been pretty high off the water for that to happen."

Rewind stared at the camera, looking at it as if he'd never seen it before. "I don't remember that happening," he said. "It must have gotten dropped again during one of my recent moves. Definitely wasn't cracked the first time."

"So was that the end of your career as a photographer, or did you keep it up?" Chromedome asked.

Rewind brightened. "Oh no, I've destroyed several cameras since then. Dominus used to say the only thing that could possibly stop me from dropping a camera would be to have it bolted to the side of my head. Which, honestly, I've considered? They make models now that you can have direct wired into your visual processing center. The Functionists would be horrified. That's only, like, 30 percent of the appeal though."

Through a winding conversation on cameras—Rewind had opinions—and Functionism—Rewind had opinions about that too, but it involved slightly more cursing—the topic of Disposables came up. "There's really not that many of us left," he said, with a shrug. "I was one of the lucky ones. The luckiest. I got Dominus."

"I feel like I remember this, actually," Chromedome said. "Wasn't Dominus Ambus involved in advocating for legal rights for the ‘disposable’ class based on sentience tests?"

"Mm, yes, that was a thing he did," Rewind said.

"Wait. Was that because of you? Do all the datasticks and laser pointers and all them have rights now because of you?"

"Don't be silly," Rewind waved him off. "Any substantive legislative and cultural change happens because of the intersection of huge amounts of activism work and good luck. Dominus was just in the right place at the right time and I happened to be his."

"But Dominus decided to advocate for disp—for former disposables—because of you?"

Rewind shrugged. "Well, maybe a little bit."

"Primus, I should get you in a room with Brainstorm. He's my—well, I guess he's my only friend. He's also physically incapable of humility. Spitfire smart, like you are, just a lot more...grandiose about it."

"He sounds like a character."
"Well he's no Dominus Ambus," Chromedome said. "But he's a good friend. Was a good friend. I don't know, things have been weird between us lately. He got transferred away from the Institute and ever since he's been distant. I mean, physically distant obviously. But also distant distant. I’ve called him up a few times and he’s always a hurry to get off the phone. It's like I've done something to make him mad at me, but he won't tell me what it is."

"Have you tried asking him?"

"Um, well, not exactly?" Chromedome stammered.

Rewind laughed, then tried to explain that he wasn't laughing at Chromedome, which was absolute bunk. Still, he had a nice laugh. And he got adorably flustered when Chromedome pretended to be hurt over it. Not adorable. Charming. Chromedome wished he was friends with Rewind. Spending time with him was...nice.

Somehow, despite their best intentions and Rewind's promises every ten minutes that he was absolutely going to recharge in just a couple more minutes, they ended up staying up through the night. There weren't any windows in the apartment and Chromedome had rather lost track of time when Rewind's wake-up alarm started going off, midway through a discursive ramble on the merits of quantum versus magnetic versus optical storage of long term archival records. "I mean, my primary objection to quantum storage is that it doesn't make any fragging sense, how am I supposed to trust that—"

At the sound of the alarm going off, Rewind froze and then, very slowly laid down on the floor and covered his face with his hands. "What have I done?" Rewind moaned. "I can't believe you tricked me into staying up all night, Domey."

"Me? Tricked you? I did no such thing," Chromedome said solemnly. He waited a beat. "Are you going to turn that off, or..."

"I'm keeping it as a cenotaph to my bad decision making," Rewind said.

"I mean, it's not like you need to recharge every night. Nobody recharges every night. It's just nice; to keep your defrag cycle short."

Rewind glared at him.

"Or maybe you need to recharge every night and I should stop talking?" Chromedome suggested.

"I told you, I'm getting old," Rewind said, dismissing the alarm with a wave of his hand and dragging himself to his feet. "After a couple thousand years of fuel deprivation it starts taking a toll." Rewind froze. "Sorry, that was super personal and I don't know why I told you that."

They stood there in awkward silence for a moment. "So, see you tonight?" Chromedome asked. "Unless you want to give up on work and recharge now?"

"Don't tempt me," Rewind said. "I'll see you tonight, Chromedome. Take care of yourself, okay?"

And then he was gone.

The second day passed much the same as the first, faces blurring together until Chromedome was no longer certain he could recognize his own face. He decided to take breaks on a timer, spent the time lying on the floor and studying the ceiling and thinking about Rewind.

He liked Rewind. He liked Rewind too much. He'd only met him the day before yesterday and till kept catching himself checking his chrono like it might magically be time for Rewind to get home. He needed to tone it down—he was here because Rewind was good, because he couldn't look someone in the optics and let them die if there was something he could do to help. Chromedome found himself fantasizing about finding some way to stay with Rewind, of finding the money to escape off-planet together. But that was absurd—Rewind's work was here. And Dominus was here, somewhere. Alive or dead, Dominus was here.

He hoped he wasn't falling in love with Rewind. He'd never been in love before, he wasn’t sure what it was supposed to feel like. It would have been totally inappropriate; Rewind already had a lover and he was mourning Dominus...

Chromedome forced himself to think about other things, but self-reflection tended to lead him back to the great yawning emptiness in his life. What had he even been doing with his time? All those years wasted and he hadn't even cultivated a hobby, made a single friend outside of Brainstorm...it was like after he started doing mnemosurgery every other part of his life withered away.

In any case, he was exceedingly glad when Rewind showed back up.

"Are you sitting around in the dark?" Rewind asked.

"Easier to see the projector that way," Chromedome said, even though he'd had the projector turned off for almost an hour at that point.

"If you say so," Rewind said, climbing up onto the bench to get the cord for the light. "Any luck?"

"Not so far—you?"

"Not with Dominus," Rewind said. "But I did find some fascinating records on the Institute."

"Rewind!" He hissed. "You can't be looking that up! The last thing we should be doing is attracting attention."

"I was reviewing physical records in a deserted library archive, nobody saw me," Rewind said. "Anyways, I wasn't looking at information on the New Institute. I was looking at stuff about the original Institute."

"Why?" Chromedome moaned.

"Well, it's information that ought to be archived, obviously. And I had questions about mnemosurgery but you're obviously....not comfortable talking about it. So I did a little independent research. That's kinda my thing. I'm curious, I investigate."

"What did you want to know?" Chromedome asked, getting up to join Rewind on the bench. He couldn't really sit on it properly, but if he stretched his legs out he could do a lazy slouch.

"What happened to the old mnemosurgeons? I'd always imagined them, I don't know, being arrested or executed for their crimes. But then who would have trained the mnemosurgeons at the New Institute?"

"What did you find?" Chromedome asked. He'd never thought about the fact there might be records about the old Institute.

"There were over two thousand cerebroscientists and mnemosurgeons arrested the day they raided the Institute. Of those, I found twenty-seven who were granted amnesty by Zeta. I assume they might have gone on to work at the New Institute."

"What about the other ones?" Chromedome asked.

"That's what I was going to ask you," Rewind said. "There weren't any records on them."

"No idea," Chromedome said. "I had no idea the old Institute was such a large operation. I don't know how they kept it a secret."

"Well, not that hard, really," Rewind said. "Keep all your personnel on site and wipe them if they start getting restless. If anything slips through the cracks...well, if you were an evil mnemosurgeon there would be multiple options available for a cover up."

"I don't know if anyone's told you this, but you're kind of dark," Chromedome said.

"I'm a realist," Rewind said. "How would you do it?"

Chromedome shrugged. "Dunno. Don't spend a lot of time imagining being an evil mnemosurgeon."

"But I was right that some of the old Institute mnemosurgeons work for the New Institute?"

"That's classified," Chromedome said.

Rewind pouted at him.

"Yeah, they do. Senior staff is mostly original Institute. You don't see them around as much anymore, though."

"Oh?"

"Well, there's more junior mnemosurgeons now so they don't have to take active duty as often. And the senior staff tend to keep to themselves." He thought about it. Who had he seen from the old Institute recently besides Axotomy and Trepan? There were a few mechs on the medical team but there must have been more.

"If they have more experience, shouldn't they be doing more work?" Rewind asked.

Chromedome shrugged. "Nobody asked me."

"Okay, so the stuff I was reading tried to explain this and I still don't get it. How does mnemosurgery work? They refer to it as ‘injecting’ but what are you injecting? Some sort of chemical?"

Chromedome shook his head. "Nah. It's more like...okay. So. Your memory banks are made up of a huge number of gate cells, which are all connected together. Charge applied to each gate changes its polarity and the alternating polarity of thousands and millions of gates in sequence makes up...you. Those sequences all interlink and overlap and all that fancy stuff, but that's the basics. When I inject I'm putting the conductive ends of my needles in contact with certain inner bands of the subject's lifecord, where the sensornet branches into different junctions with the brain module. Electric current in varying intensities and frequency applied to the sensornet causes a field electron emission effect which can either set or unset individual floating gates."

"Yeah that sounds like the summary I was trying and failing to read," Rewind said. "I sort of get how that could allow you to alter the contents of the brain. But how do you read memories?"

"Yeah, that's harder to explain. I've never been good at the theory for that part," Chromedome admitted. "Generally you split the channels, at least two fingers for injecting and two for receiving, though styles vary. These needles are deepwired into my sensornet, so when I want to read what I'm essentially doing is sending pulses and then letting them echo back onto my sensornet."

"But how does it get all the way to your brain? Wouldn't it end up in your arm and make you twitchy?"

"No, no, they're deep wired," Chromedome said. "Line goes all the way up."

"Woah. That's intense," Rewind said. "How did they figure out they could do that without overwriting your brain module? Or overcharging your neural net?"

Chromedome thought about the way sometimes he'd recognize faces of people he'd never met and places he'd never been. He thought about the memory purges where, for brief snatches of time, he wasn’t sure who he was. He wondered...

He shrugged. "They'd gotten the science figured out long before I'd started."

"Well, I guess if there were any long-term impacts they'd have noticed it by now. Especially the senior mnemosurgeons—"

"Hey, can we maybe talk about something else?" Chromedome asked softly. He reached up to rub his temple, where a headache seemed to be building.

"Yeah, of course," Rewind said. "Shouldn't have pressed." He looked over at Chromedome. "Have you really been here all day? We could go out for a bit. Look at the stars."

"Someone could see me. Your neighbors," Chromedome pointed out.

"My neighbors aren't snitches," Rewind said. "And it's not like they have windows anyway."

"Sure, but if they happened to walk by and saw me," Chromedome stretched his hand upwards, "on your tiny balcony, I think they'd remember that. And whatever they remember is information the Institute could uncover. They don't need to tell anyone."

"Do you really think someone's planning to hunt you down and haul you back?" Rewind asked.

Chromedome shrugged. "I don't know. I have no idea. I’ve never heard of a mnemosurgeon who ran before. I don't have a lot to work off of right now."

"Come on, just for a bit," Rewind sid.

"I feel like you're not taking this very seriously," Chromedome said.

"Because you're being, frankly, a bit paranoid. There are thousands of people in this city. There are hundreds of ways in and out. There would be no reason for anyone to suspect you would have gone here in particular or to be asking around in this neighborhood. There aren't any security cameras around here and this isn't Autobot controlled space."

Chromedome wanted to make Rewind understand, but he couldn't think of a way without dragging Rewind deeper. He didn't want to do mnemosurgery anymore and he was pretty sure Rewind's earlier description of what he'd do if he was an "evil mnemosurgeon" had stuck in this head...the Institute didn't have to court martial him. They just had to make him forget that he'd objected.

Chromedome decided to play the headache card and turn in early. "You stayed up all last night," he pointed out. "You should probably recharge too."

Rewind sighed. "If it makes you feel better. But you're taking the berth."

"Rewind, I'm not going to fit. And I'm certainly not displacing you from your own berth."

"You're not going to, we'll both fit," Rewind said. "Just have to do it right."

He manhandled Chromedome into lying down on his side, knees bent to stop his legs from hanging out over the edge. Then Rewind climbed up on the berth and reached over Chromedome to open the infuser cabinet. "Sorry I only have one," he said.

"Don't worry about it," Chromedome said. "I can refuel while you're at work."

After he'd hooked in, Rewind lay down, curling into the space between Chromedome's chest and his legs. "Is this okay?" He asked.

"It's okay," Chromedome decided. He was so close he could feel the hum of Rewind's spark, or maybe that was his own spark huge in his chest.

"Me and Dominus used to sleep like this sometimes," Rewind said . "Before we were...I didn't have a berth of my own, at first, and he was so very stubborn about me sleeping on the ground. I’ve missed this."

Chromedome didn't know what to call the flood of emotions that were currently battling for dominion of his spark so he let the comment lie and lay as still as he possibly could. He was awake long after Rewind drifted off.

Chromedome was on the verge of a breakthrough, he was certain of it. Some of the things Rewind had talked about the night before had made him wonder, and had made him wonder how he'd never wondered about those things before.

What had happened to the other mnemosurgeons from the original Institute? He couldn't rule out the possibility that they had stayed in jail, that they'd moved on to other lines of work...but it was suspicious that whatever it was wasn't part of the public record. Even moreso was his certainty that there was an inner circle of senior mnemosurgeons that had been part of the New Institute—he wasn't sure how many but there had to have been more than two? But there was only Trepan and Axotomy. If there were only two why did he think of them as being a large group?

Rewind was old; he had an excuse for all his aches and pains. Chromedome didn’t. He could remember back when he’d worked as a detective, he hadn’t felt so exhausted all the time back then. He hadn’t felt hollow. It had been easier to think clearly.

It was the fact that he couldn't remember ever wondering about any of this before that he found most unsettling. Sure, he wasn't a genius like Brainstorm. But had he really never wondered why there were mandatory weekly medical checks for mnemosurgeons when weren't any known health effects of mnemosurgery? Had he really never wondered whether the energy used for injecting might be finite?

Wipe them if they start getting restless...there were things that didn't add up. Not just the medical stuff, though he thought that might be the core of it. Rewind had to have noticed, hadn’t he? There was something between them and Chromedome couldn't explain it—the little details that felt familiar before he'd been told. The light hanging from the ceiling that he'd known to duck. The inscription on the camera. The way Chromedome knew he couldn't be in love with Rewind but nevertheless, was.

Chromedome considered the UV projector and knew there was one more thing he had to ask about. But first, he needed to go digging.

He positioned himself in the washrack, sitting on the floor where the polished metal surface of the walls would act as a mirror. Positioning his hand against the back of his neck was difficult, he stabbed himself three times without hitting lifecord. It hurt. He kept going, knowing he was added to his collection of overlapping circular scars.

Chromedome didn't bother to try a memory read once he was inside—it was his brain, he knew what he remembered. Instead he started checking for gates that were reset to a neutral state, places where memories had either never been made or had been erased.

There were a lot of empty spaces. Chromedome didn't know—couldn't calculate—how many days, years, the missing spaces would total to. But it stretched back to when he joined the Institute and grew and grew and grew, until the gaps were larger than the undisturbed memory blocks in between. Chromedome located Overlord's attack and found a disturbing blank space afterwards. He didn’t know how much time he'd lost, but he was certain it hadn't all been asleep in the hospital.

Chromedome dragged his needles free and, not knowing what else to do, curled up on the floor and cried. He hadn't wanted to be right. He hadn't wanted to be right.

Eventually he had to sit up and face the facts. He had three choices—he could run, he end up back at the Institute or he could destroy himself to spite them. The problem was Rewind. No matter which option he chose he wouldn’t see Rewind again. If he suggested it, Rewind might run with him but if they got caught together...it didn’t bear thinking. If he went back, if he died, if he broke himself beyond use, not matter what option he chose he would lose Rewind. And that was unacceptable.

"We need a plan," he said. Out loud, because sometimes you need to talk out loud to make things real. "Panicking doesn't count as a plan." He stared at his reflection and decided that whatever else happened he was sure of two things:

He was going to keep Rewind safe.

Nobody was getting in his head ever again.

That decided, he extended his needles and slid them into the holes in the back of his neck.

When Rewind got home that night, he seemed restless. He waved Chromedome off when he tried to ask if there was something up, tried to redirect the conversation to talk about Chromedome's day. "Any luck?" he asked.

Chromedome shook his head. "I got caught up thinking about...big decision stuff."

"Don't worry, I didn't make any progress either," Rewind said.

"I could look through some of it now," Chromedome suggested.

"Oh, probably better not to," Rewind said. "I'm allergic to UV light."

"Really?" Chromedome quirked his head at him. "I've never met someone with a—" real UV allergy. He swallowed the rest of the sentence, not liking the taste of it. "Never met anyone with a UV allergy before. Does that give you trouble walking around when it's sunny?"

"It's intensity triggered, really only an issue with medical scanners," Rewind said. "But probably better not to risk it with the projector. That's why I'd been putting off looking through the photos."

They tried to talk after that, but Chromedome was distracted by memories of carefully planted UV allergies. Eventually a doctor was going to have to realize the truly improbable number of Autobots with allergies to ubiquitous electromagnetic radiation. But it had been orders.

"Do you want to just relax for a bit and listen to music?" Rewind said.

"Yes please," Chromedome said. He didn't have much of a taste in music but he would happily do anything where he got to stay at Rewind's side without talking to him, when every word felt like a lie of omission.

"Okay, there's a band I've been getting into lately...I can't remember where I heard them first, probably on the radio or something. They're called ‘Vroom’."

Rewind's music was fun, half-familiar in a way that had Chromedome thinking maybe he'd heard them on the radio once before as well. "You should dance," he said, seeing the way Rewind's hands fidgeted against the floor in time to the beat.

"I don't dance," Rewind said. "Who told you I danced?"

"Nobody told me anything," Chromedome said. "You just seem like the dancing sort."

Rewind, sure enough, could dance. Chromedome had never seen a dance that involved quite so many dramatic poses and rapid hand motions—it was kinda like watching someone speak chirolinguistics all by themselves to a beat. Maybe that's how people danced nowadays. Chromedome had never been the clubbing sort. He could have watched him all night, sitting on the berth with his legs drawn in to his chest to keep from tripping Rewind in the small space.

When Rewind wore himself out, he dropped into the berth beside Chromedome. "Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?" Rewind asked, curling up against Chromedome's chest like he had the night before.

"I have to figure out what I do next," Chromedome said. "It's a decision I need to make."

"You can stay with me," Rewind said.

"Not forever," Chromedome said. "I can't hide in your apartment forever, Rewind."

"You're not going back to the clinic, are you?" Rewind asked.

"No, I'm not going back to the clinic," Chromedome said. "Would you...no. That'd be awfully selfish of me to ask. Forget it."

"What? Come now, Domey, you can't say that and not tell me." Rewind reached over and took Chromedome's wrist, pulling it to wrap around his waist. "I am relentless when there's a mystery about, I'm sure you've figured that out by now."

"I did notice that," Chromedome said. "I was going to ask if you would miss me. If I went—"

"I'd miss you," Rewind said. "Not to sound hokey or anything, but I like you. You’re easy to like, you know?"

"Same for you," Chromedome said.

When Rewind was asleep his grip on Chromedome's arm loosened and Chromedome was able to carefully extract himself from the berth. He powered on his integrated wrist light and shone it on the back of Rewind's neck, adjusting the wavelength into the UV range. A lurid set of circular scars marred Rewind’s perfect plating; Chromedome wondered what they'd been to each other, once. Then he switched off the light and left the apartment.

He'd planned to walk to a population center before calling Axotomy; so that they couldn't trace the call back to Rewind. The two MTOs who showed up to block his path onto the main street apparently wanted to save him the walk.

Chromedome rolled his shoulders as he approached them. "Either of you want to call Axotomy for me?"

"Tumbler, we're going to have to ask you to come along quietly—"

Chromedome swiped the guard's feet out from under him and used the opportunity to land a solid punch to the face. He'd been wanting to punch someone all day. The other guard scrambled to get their laser pistol out but Chromedome had already gotten his needles in the neck of his companion. He ducked down behind his new living shield. "Really. Just call Axotomy, nobody has to get hurt," Chromedome said. With his free hand he retrieved his guard's pistol and pointed it at their head. "Tell him I want to make a deal. He wants me back? He can have me. But he's got to come down here in person."

The other guard still didn't move, so Chromedome dialed Axotomy on his comm. "Hey, Axotomy, are you in the area? It's Chromedome. We really should talk."

Axotomy was dripping incenserity. "Chromedome, it's so good to hear from you. We were concerned that—"

"Save it. You want me back? You're going to come to these coordinates in the next ten minutes," Chromedome said. "And tell your lackeys to stand down. I don't want to have to break them."

"...I'll be there," Axotomy said, false friendliness gone.

Chromedome braced his laser pistol against his hip and said conversationally, "So if you knew I was here, what were you two doing hanging out outside? Did I happen to walk out just as you were coming to get me?"

"They told us to keep watch over the archivist's apartment," Chromedome's guard said. "They had the place bugged, so they knew you were there."

"So what, you were just going to let me hang out with Rewind indefinitely? I'm not seeing the strategy there," Chromedome said. He was already feeling a bit worn down from the mnemosurgery he'd done earlier that day, but it wasn't difficult to hold the guard in place and it was hardly more difficult to skim some surface memories to find their orders. "Oh, that's not very nice," Chromedome said. "You were going to break in and threaten that nice minibot so I'd come with you? Not the sort of thing an upstanding citizen would do."

"Only if you wouldn’t come quietly," the other guard said defensively. "If you came with us nobody would have gotten hurt."

"So why were you having them wait another day before threatening me, Axotomy?" Chromedome asked, glancing over at the Director of Mnemosurgery as he walked towards them. He must have flown in to show up that fast—Chromedome appreciated that he was apparently the top of Axotomy's to-do list. He'd never been great at reading Axotomy's body language but he seemed different than usual. More wary. Good. Chromedome had a burning desire to hit someone until they started giving him answers and these guards didn't know anything useful.

"I assumed it would take at least that long for you to become suitably attached to your new...friend," Axotomy said.

"The funny thing is, I felt attached the moment I met him. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you, Axotomy?" Chromedome said. "Tell your guard to fall back and put down his weapon and I’ll do the same."

"Backswitch? Do as he says. We're not looking for trouble," Axotomy said smoothly.

"Boss?" The guard who Chromedome had hooked said plaintively.

"Stay calm Influx. I am sure that when Chromedome and I are done with our business you will be free to go," Axotomy said.

Chromedome waited until Backswitch had put down his gun and kicked it away from them before following suit. He brought his guard—Influx, apparently—down onto his knees. No point in giving up his leverage and ending up kidnapped before he could even lay out his terms. "I'm willing to make a deal," Chromedome said.

"If you come back with us the minibot will not be harmed," Axotomy said.

Chromedome laughed. "Oh no, those aren't my terms."

"What do you want?" Axotomy asked and Chromedome was certain he heard an edge of apprehension in his voice. Axotomy had started wearing a faceplate since he’d last seen him, which made it harder to read his expressions, but his voice was an open book.

"I want to have never learned mnemosurgery and to go somewhere far, far away from this war," Chromedome said. "Don't ask me what I want. Let me lay out my terms: I get to stay with Rewind. And no one you employ touches him ever again. I'm aware that I can't watch him every day and that someone only has to slip through once to destroy everything we have together."

"You would be of considerable less use to the Institute if you're roaming the planet following at the heels of your new friend," Axotomy said.

"And yet, that's my price," Chromedome said. "I'm willing to return to the Institute as needed, or to carry out work remotely. And to sweeten the deal, I'll keep my mouth shut when I drop by."

"Keep your mouth shut about what, exactly?"

"The fact that every mnemosurgeon there is dying and you're manipulating their memories so they don't notice, or so they don't remember noticing," Chromedome said.

Axotomy looked around. "Who told you that?"

"Nobody told me that," Chromedome said. "But when you think about it for a minute, it's really fragging obvious. Honestly, the number of memories you've erased at this point is so unsettling that even a non-mnemosurgeon would realize there was something wrong. You would have been better off stripping me of everything."

"We can't," Axotomy said. "We've tried. There's a critical level of wipes after which the risks of mnemosurgery rise precipitously."

"Well that's pretty inconvenient for you," Chromedome said. "So, what do you say?"

"Honestly?"

"Sure, let's be honest with each other, Axotomy. It'll be a novelty."

"I have no incentive to make deals with you, Chromedome. You aren't going to remember the terms of the arrangement, in any case," Axotomy said.

"I guess I'm not maxed out on erases yet," Chromedome said.

"If you would stop running away and getting yourself in trouble I wouldn't have to keep doing this," Axotomy said.

"The problem is, not all memories are stored in the brain, Axotomy. When you blank out a memory, it can no longer be read from the spark. But that doesn't mean the spark has forgotten. The emotions, the involuntary impulses, they have a tendency to leak through. And, in any case, there's something I should tell you, before you try to get all handsy." Chromedome extended the needles on his other hand and waggled them, grinning beneath his faceplate.

"I can tell you're enjoying this, Chromedome, but if you could stop dragging out the moment and just say what you've brought me out here to say—"

"You can't read me. And you can't write me. And you're certainly never blanking me again. I can see why Trepan was always so adamantly against self-surgery—I did a little rewiring today." He tapped his needles against the side of his neck in demonstration, then retracted them. "The next person who tries to stick their fingers in my brain is going to suffer spontaneous spark failure. Probably kill me too, but the important thing is that I have insurance."

"If it were possible to guard yourself against mnemosurgery like that our department would be useless."

"Well, you have to be a mnemosurgeon," Chromedome said. "You've got to know that mnemosurgery kills people and you've got to be able to intuit how it could do that. And you've got to be willing to give yourself a little brain damage for the cause. I don't think there'll be many takers."

"That is very clever of you," Axotomy said. "It could, of course, be a ruse. I can't discount the possibility. But how can I risk it? The loss of one mnemosurgeon is a tragedy. To lose two in one incident is sheer carelessness."

"Then we have a deal?"

"No."

Axotomy waved a hand and fuel splattered across the pavement. Chromedome felt the pain and confusion as Influx ‘s mind began to fall away from him even as he disengaged and let the body fall to the ground. The feedback was like a blow to the head and by the time he was able to focus again there were two guards dead and a red dot floating on his chest. Sniper. Axotomy must have brought backup.

Axotomy picked up one of the guns that lay abandoned on the pavement and made a show of inspecting it. "Why would I allow a mnemosurgeon that I cannot control stay in possession of that information? It's a shame, because you are quite talented. But your services as a surgeon are hardly enough to outweigh the risks to my department."

Dying wasn't an acceptable option. He wasn't going to vanish into the night without a trace like Dominus.

Chromedome tried to reassure himself that once he was gone the Institute would have no reason to bother Rewind. But of course they would. Rewind was clever and he was curious and he would find out what had happened to Chromedome. And in the process he'd probably take down the whole Institute or get himself killed.

"What if I offered you something more," Chromedome asked, hating himself. Rewind would hate him, if he knew. But he had nothing left to offer, except—"Keeping all those people unawares, all that continually nudging away from the light, that's got to be expensive. How many friends of yours have died to keep that hushed?"

"It will kill you eventually as well," Axotomy said.

"And until it does, I get to be with him."

Chromedome didn't have any illusions of being a good person. It wasn't enough to hate doing horrible things—if he were good he would have refused to do them, for any price. There was a difference between following orders to do evil and volunteering yourself for the task. He thought Rewind could forgive him the first, even if Chromedome couldn't. He didn't think anyone could forgive him the second.

"There you are," Rewind said. Chromedome glanced over his shoulder, head resting against the balcony railing. The sun was just rising, not yet high enough to be seen over the buildings as the light built up around them.

Rewind closed the door and sat down beside Chromedome. "I thought maybe you'd gone," he said.

Chromedome shook his head.

Rewind stared at him, apparently seeing something in his face. "You're not gone, but you're leaving," he said.

"Sometimes your duty to the greater good is more important than the way that duty makes you feel," Chromedome lied.

"Oh, Domey," Rewind said. "I wish you didn't have to."

"So do I," he said. "I'm not giving up on you and Dominus though. If you still want my help..."

"Of course."

"Then I'll help you search as best I can," Chromedome promised. "And whenever I can, I'll come to visit. And if you're ever in the area...I got permission for you to visit me at the Institute."

"Me? An archivist at the New Institute?"

"You never know where the world might take you," Chromedome said.

There were years before the deal that were, in Chromedome's memory, reduced to a smattering of moments. In the years after there were times where he longed to repeat that process. But when he'd rigged his brain to kill, he hadn't made any exceptions.

The moments he would have wanted to keep were all Rewind. Their phone calls: initially focused on the search for Dominus, that grew from weekly check-ins to near nightly aimless, endless conversations. Their messages, both Chromedome's long letters and Rewind's staccato stream of jokes, photographs and song recommendations. Their meetings, days when Chromedome was sent on assignment outside the Institute and took the long way back.

Things changed, as things are wont to do.

Tyrest’s peace negotiations failed and he and Dai Atlas oversaw the departure of millions of Cybertronians who fled the war in the Exodus. Optimus was nearly destroyed at the battle of Sherma Bridge, but Ratchet pulled off a miracle and reassembled him. Nearly half the population died in the Simanzi Massacre and the rest of them were left reeling.

And so things went.

When Chromedome had returned to the Institute there had been nine remaining surgeons from the original Institute, nine people and Chromedome keeping the conspiracy. Six survived until the Battle of Sherma Bridge. There were four after Simanzi. Each of them disappeared unmourned after their passing, not even their fellow conspirators mentioning them as they adjusted their assignments to cover more of the facility.

Mnemosurgeons tend to die on the job. Axotomy did, leaving only Chromedome and one other surgeon to carry on his work. By that point, Metatone was so weak he couldn't extend his needles.

High Command came to Chromedome. Or rather, Prowl did. "Autobot Intelligence is going to be taking over the mnemosurgery department," he told Chromedome. "There was talk of you or one of the others heading the department. I told them you didn't have the stomach for it," Prowl said. "Are you going to fight me on that?"

Chromedome told him that he would sooner walk into an active supernova than take over the mnemosurgery department. Then he told Prowl that if he wanted to keep the program running he was going to need to invest in two things: new trainees and medical researchers.

He didn't elaborate to Prowl about Rewind's role in the deal, but he suspected Prowl might have inferred. Rewind's medical history was accessible to any Autobot, after all. And it was right in his record that Rewind was allergic to UV light.

In any case, Chromedome was removed to light duty after his meeting with Prowl. Metatone died soon after and—in response to rumblings within the department—Prowl called for an autopsy. The results began the first official medical probe into the impact of mnemosurgery on the body; Chromedome was requisitioned for the panel and got to play the delicate game of presenting truths as "new theories".

"A damn waste," Ratchet said, shaking his head at that first meeting. "How many lives could we have saved if someone had told us there was a problem?"

Nobody seemed to consider Chromedome might have been more involved than as another front-line mnemosurgeon too scared of upper management to raise concerns. He didn't correct them.

The war moved beyond Cybertron and it was decided that the scientists and engineers would be moved off-planet to follow it. Chromedome had already packed up his personal effects and was in the process of moving them onto his assigned research vessel. He was supposed to be attending a meeting in a few hours about what to do with the Institute assets that couldn't be relocated—current estimates were that the Decepticons would take the territory the Institute was situated on in the next few months. Chromedome was hoping for some cleansing fire. Brainstorm was going to be at the meeting; surely he’d have something flammable on hand.

It was going to be a big change—out in space rather than sequestered underground. He'd been on a few topside missions each year, made a few pilgrimages to visit Rewind but it was still breathtaking every time he got to see the sky. His room on this ship had a window. There were stars out, spilling light across the berths and empty shelving. Chromedome went to the window to look.

"It's not too late for us to go stargazing," Rewind said from behind him. Chromedome jumped.

When he turned around Rewind was there, really there, standing in his doorway with a little cart of datapads beside him. "Rewind? What are you doing here?" There wasn't supposed to be anyone on the ship except maintenance and onboarding crewmembers but Rewind wasn't—they'd been talking the night before, Rewind hadn't said anything about a new assignment.

"Surprising you," Rewind said. "I'm told we're supposed to double up berthrooms for efficiency reasons. Is that berth taken?"

"You're on my ship? You're coming with us? Off Cybertron?"

"Off Cybertron was inevitable eventually," Rewind said. "Not everything that ought to be recorded is in the past. History is happening at every moment, all around us. They gave me my pick of research vessels, so I picked you."

"Is that a new camera?" Chromedome asked, walking over to help Rewind move his stuff into the room. Rewind preened at the question, tilting his head to show off the new model, bolted onto the side of his helm. "Does this one have the real-time exposure adjustments you were pining after?"

"It does," Rewind. "Also I broke the last one."

"How?" Chromedome asked, running his thumb over the camera. "They're attached to your head now, you've got to keep them safe. The stuff in your head is important."

"Oh, let's not talk about it yet, you'll get all worked up," Rewind said. "I want to enjoy this first." He held out his arms for Chromedome to hug him.

Chromedome did, hesitantly, letting his hands rest loosely on Rewind's upper back. "I missed you," he said. "I can't believe we're going to be traveling together. I can't believe you chose my ship."

"Domey, do I have to spell it out for you?" Rewind asked. He hoisted himself up to stand on Chrmoedome's kneeguards, which got him high enough up to lock his hands around the back of Chromedome's neck. "Domey, why wouldn't I choose your ship? I'm in love with you."

Chromedome hit pause. "But, Dominus..."

"Has been missing for longer than Optimus has been Prime. I love him. I'll always love him, and I'll never stop looking for him. But the person who's been with me through all of that, the person I look forward to speaking to every day? That's you. You're not going to tell me you don't love me back, are you?"

"I do. I just—" don't deserve you "—didn't expect you would return the sentiment. Rewind, you know what kind of work I do. I don't want you to—"

"I know what you do," Rewind said. "And I love you anyway."

If there had ever been a right moment to tell Rewind about the deal, about what he'd chosen to keep Rewind safe, that would have been it. Chromedome decided to spend the time holding Rewind instead.

"You're attending the meeting in a few hours at the Institute, right?" Rewind asked eventually, helm still pushed up against Chromedome's.

"Oh no, you can't make them keep all that stuff. I'm going to lobby for a fiery end."

"Chromedome you can't just burn documents," Rewind moaned. "What I was going to say was, could you give me a ride over? It's kinda inaccessible by foot."

"So you’re finally going to see the Institute," Chromedome said. "And you're going to let me drive you somewhere? And you're telling me you love me, all on the same day? This might be a daydream."

"Life takes you strange places sometimes," Rewind said. "And I don't object to you driving, I just said that a youthful dreams of high octane driving that you held onto long enough to keep the name ‘Tumbler’ does not inspire confidence."

"I can be safe. I can be extremely safe," Chromedome said. "If you're with me, whatever you want. I'll do it."

"What if I want you to be happy?"

"Well, that'll be easy. I'm happy when I'm with you."