Non-routine Maintenance

[Optimus Prime]

Month 1, Week 2, Day 7, Open to Autobots and Maximals

It is an unfortunate fact that unlike an Autobot, the Event Horizon cannot repair itself, no matter how much time or energon it is given. Thus, Optimus Prime is repairing it. He's currently moored to one of the damaged thruster bells, straightening metal where he can and cutting away damaged sections where he can't.

It's repetitive, monotonous work, and it gives him time to think. It's a lot like maintaining space bridges, actually. He almost expects to hear Ratchet pipe up over the radio, yelling at Bumblebee and Bulkhead to knock off whatever short-circuited nonsense they're up to.

[Sentinel Prime]

The most unfortunate fact of all is that Sentinel Prime is stuck with Optimus on this shift. Fixing ships is not work fit for a warrior! Oh sure, it's important, and the ship falling apart while they're trying to use it would be bad, but it's not the sort of thing that Sentinel Prime feels he should be dealing with personally. He feels he should have people to handle this sort of thing, Science Guild flunkies.

Chasing down fugitives? Now there's proper work for an Elite Guardsman. This is not it.

Even more irritating, like sand in his gears, is that Optimus is good at this stuff. Granted, being good at something mundane and thoroughly unglamorous is a completely loser sort of thing, nothing worth bragging about, but...

...but...

...being sidekick to Captain Loser is even worse, and sidekick Sentinel Prime is, because his clue quotient on fixing ships is exactly nada. He's just here to carry stuff and pass Optimus things. Infuriating!

Pulling his rope in a bit so that he can sit down next to where Optimus is working, Sentinel Prime sets his crate of extra supplies on his lap, looks up at Optimus with a 'shoot me now' expression on his face, and reports, //Okay, I brought the... stuff? Slagged if I know what this is.// He opens up the box and a thruster rib comes floating out. Sentinel Prime wildly swipes through the vacuum, grabs it, and jams it back in the crate. //...uh, do you need the curved things or the straight things first?//

[Optimus Prime]

Captain Loser does not actually know all that much about fixing starships, but they're similar enough to space bridges that he's able to muddle through on the large scale structural repairs. Any reasonably intelligent 'bot ought to be able to look at the intact thruster bells, the damaged ones, and the box of parts, and see more or less how they fit together. It's just ribs and sheet metal! Captain Loser Maintenance Prime Optimus suspects Sentinel could figure it out if he'd just get down off his high robo-horse.

//The long straight ones,// he transmits back, taking a cutting torch from his subspace and proceeding to cut off the mangled end of a support strut so they can make a clean join.

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime is 'cunning', according to his tech spec, so he probably could figure out spaceships if he was motivated, but he's not. He does not want to be head of the Science Guild! And that is the only possible good thing that could come of knowing how to fix spaceships. There's not enough glory in that for him and not enough arbitrary power.

He sighs silently, unheard in space, and hands Optimus one of those long straight things. Sentinel Prime doesn't even try to fake-out like Lucy and steal the football longeron from Optimus at the last moment. He's very resigned and subdued about it all.

[Optimus Prime]

Sentinel Prime ought to know how to fix spaceships, just in case the Steelhaven gets damaged and Jazz and the jet twins are busy. Also, if Sentinel was going to be Lucy, Optimus could be Ethel, and the Event Horizon could be a conveyor belt full of chocolates. That would be awesome.

The red Prime takes the long straight thing from the blue Prime, stowing the damaged support strut in his subspace and welding the new one in place.

//Is something wrong, Sentinel?// Okay, dumb question. //I mean, besides the usual stuff.//

[Sentinel Prime]

Oh, like Jazz and the jet Twins would have any better idea of it than Sentinel Prime does! They're professional soldiers, all of them. They have people to fix their stuff when it is broken! Except when the stuff is broken because Sentinel Prime sold the parts.

It's a good thing Optimus specified, because otherwise Sentinel Prime could have launched into a rant complaining about almost anything. As it is, he looks away shiftily, gives another silent sigh, and only grudgingly answers, //So what do you want from me?//

[Optimus Prime]

What if their stuff gets broken when no-one else is around? Say, by flying through a cloud of purple lightning in deep space?

Optimus pauses in his work and looks over at Sentinel. His optics are a rather duller blue than usual due to their sensitivity being turned down. He's welding, after all. The look on the young Prime's face is one of mingled exasperation and concern. //I don't want anything from you Sentinel. You're just not your usual boisterous self and I'm worried.//

'Boisterous' is the most polite word Optimus Prime can think of to describe Sentinel's usual personality. He's not the kind of 'bot to call someone a raging piston-head to their face.

[Sentinel Prime]

Wait for a repair tech, like normal people?

Sentinel Prime shakes his head, and his expression settles into something firmer and grimmer. He insists, //I owe you. What do you want?//

He admitted wrongdoing, which is particularly hard for him, given his particular blind spots, but admitting wrongdoing, hard as it was, really doesn't fix anything. There must be restitution. There are forms to be obeyed.

[Optimus Prime]

//You don't owe me anything, Sentinel,// Optimus replies, a bit confused. He rubs the back of his helmet absently. The welding torch almost drifts away before he remembers to grabs it.

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime is now plainly frustrated and annoyed. He watches the torch float, and he almost lunges to grab it, but he stills himself and lets the peon Optimus handle it. Finally, he says, between gritted teeth, almost spitting, //I said I ruined your life. What do you want me to do make it up to you?//

If Sentinel Prime has to make it any plainer to Optimus, he'll be tapping white mana and resorting to carpentry tools.

[Optimus Prime]

Optimus blinks, realization dawning. Oh, we're still having that conversation? //Sentinel, you didn't-// Okay, he sort of did, what with letting Optimus take the fall for his dumb idea. //I mean, Sentinel, you already apologized. You don't need to do anything to make it up to me. It's in the past. I'm not going to hold it against you.//

Besides, what could he possibly do that would make up for what happened?

[Sentinel Prime]

Sentinel Prime said they'd talk later! Later is now, and now, Sentinel Prime is just staring at Optimus incredulously and twitching faintly. Optimus is infuriating with his saintliness. If he said he wanted to paint Sentinel Prime pink and make Sentinel Prime do all his shifts of scrubbing the floor from now until forever, Sentinel Prime could understand and relate to that kind of pettiness. Forgiveness is strange, and like most strange things, it scares him a bit. When is the other boot going to drop?

Distrustful, he asks, //Really?//

[Optimus Prime]

Optimus doesn't try to be saintly, he just tries to be a good 'bot. AllSpark knows it's hard sometimes. Since coming to this universe, he's learned he's got a lot to live up to. He bends over his welding, trying to think of a response. He doesn't want to throw Sentinel's olive branch back in his face, but he wants to make himself clear.

After a brief interval, he starts, hesitantly //Sentinel, I appreciate what you're trying to do. It means a lot that you want to make amends after all this time. But there's no grand gesture you can make that's just going to wipe away everything that's happened since we were cadets together. I know we'll probably never be great friends again, but . . . oh, I don't know.//

[Sentinel Prime]

The other boot drops.

Sentinel Prime is quiet for a while, brooding. He sees things rather in black and white, right and wrong, without the subtle gradations. Sentinel Prime breaks back in with, //So the only thing I can do for you is die, then.//

All his old friends want him dead. It's rather unpleasant. Could his Ultra Magnus feel Sentinel Prime's stare on his back, all those times he hoped for the obsolete rustbucket's fuel pump to just give up the ghost? Was it like this? Sentinel Prime's not even a Magnus! He's nothing here - his title of Prime is the least funny joke he's ever heard. They'll get nothing from his death, nothing except satisfaction.

//Okay.//

//Not gonna do that, but okay.//

Sentinel Prime squirms a bit and stares off at the stars. What is even the point of apologising if it ends up not mattering, anyway? He should have just saved his pride and gone on with the illusion that he can do no wrong.

[Optimus Prime]

If Optimus's jaw had just dropped any harder he would have dislocated the joint. What? He just stares at Sentinel for a moment before he regains the presence of mind to talk.

//You think I want you to die? What did I say to give you that idea? Are . . . are you depressed? Do we need to talk about it?// he asks hesitantly. Optimus didn't really hear much of anything Sentinel said after the first thing.

Maybe he's gotten a virus somehow? That can lead to severe changes in behavior. //Your firewalls are all up to date, right?//