Chapter Text
Miles wasn’t asking the universe for any leniency or favoritism, not really. No, instead, Miles was just asking that he not die so… alone. It wasn’t easy to define his life; It wasn’t grand or great, it wasn't even memorable or important. But it was there, and he lived. That didn’t make it feel any less like he’d overstayed his welcome. He was twenty and he had more regrets than he could count.
He regretted letting good things slip through his fingers. He regretted not calling his mom more, or letting his dad know he was alright. He regretted not going to college or exploring his passions. He’d had dreams but never the will to follow through. But most of all, he regretted not helping Sam Witwicky when he needed him most. Twice.
It was a day that Miles still vividly remembered. A phone call from a frantic Sam telling Miles that his car had stolen itself. At first, Miles thought Sam had been on something or just cracked like that great-grandfather he was trying to sell the glasses of. But later that year when Sam had returned from ‘vacation’, he’d been distant and pushed Miles away. And Miles hadn’t reached out. There had been a lunch period where he’d sat down next to his best friend and tried to talk about the theories surrounding Mission City, but Sam had left the table as soon as the city left Miles’s mouth. And Miles had taken it as Sam being jealous he’d missed it while out of town. In a huff, he’d stopped trying to talk to Sam at all. Childish now that Miles looked back, and stupid. But at the time it seemed like he wasn’t needed, after all, Sam had landed the girl of his dreams, Mikaela Banes. It was lonely after that.
Nearly three years later, Miles was watching TV when the broadcast was hijacked; a robot was on the screen demanding his old best friend. Later Miles learned they were called Transformers and that Sam had been working with them for some time. Miles wished he had put the pieces together sooner, that he had helped his friend and protected him from whatever danger he’d gotten himself into. But he didn’t. Instead, Miles Lancaster sat on his couch and watched cartoons as his friend was being hunted. Feeling sorry for himself and his nowhere trajectory.
A few years after that, Miles had a riveting career as a File Clerk at a small business in Tranquility, Nevada. It… was work. Sure, the work was monotonous and Miles went in at an ungodly hour just to be the last one to leave, but it covered some of the bills. The important ones at least. He had no idea what Sam was up to, but as Miles sat alone in his apartment on his twentieth birthday he realized how lost he was. How little he had.
He had a tiny one-bedroom apartment with no divide between the living room and his bedroom, an almost claustrophobic kitchen, and a bathroom that lacked space but made up for it with mold. He worked day in and day out, leaving him with no friends. He had nothing worth the effort. Well…
In his pocket had a sliver of paper, on it, was Sam’s new number. Sam had changed it after the broadcast and the incident with the transformers. It was maybe the last branch Sam had extended to Miles, the only confirmation that Miles wasn’t completely meaningless to Sam’s life. But it’d been a while since Sam had given him that note, maybe the invitation wasn’t viable anymore.
Maybe his moment had come and gone… like all the others had.
Miles felt the urge to take a walk and clear his head a bit. The dim apartment wasn’t doing him any good.
Twenty… two decades. He’d seen twenty summers. About ten of them were once spent with Sam.
The streets were quiet this late at night. The dark clouds were a warning but Miles kept walking. His teal jacket and faded shirt were all he had as the storm picked up. He didn’t care. Even as the rain seeped into his shoes and soaked through to his bones, he didn’t care. His feet splashed on the concrete, leaving bubbling footprints in his wake.
It was darker now, the evening setting in and the clouds creating a pitch-black blanket over the stars. The streetlights did little to light the way in this part of town. Occasionally a car would pass, blinding him in white.
I… don’t think I’m a very good friend… or a good son… or a good person… I may not be the worst, but I’m not good. I think I’m nothing.
Miles blinked back tears. Stupid. You brought this on yourself. You were a weird kid. You had one friend and you stopped hanging out with him for what? Because he got the girl he dreamed of? Because he was clearly in a rough place?
I wish I could… I want to fix it… I need to– try.
Miles kept walking while furiously wiping the tears and rain from his eyes. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone and the note. The ink bled as he fumbled with the paper. His flip phone screen was soon littered with raindrops and Miles had to wipe them away. He typed in each digit. All he had to do was hit enter. To call Sam. To reach out. To try.
The red glow of the stoplight rippled over the black asphalt. But his phone was ominously bright with ten digits. He just had to hit enter.
The walk sign lit up and he followed its lead.
Just hit enter. Fix this. Try.
The light was red. The beacon started counting down. He heard a car and felt the heat of their headlights.
Try– just hit enter. Call him!
Miles hit enter. The dial rang in his ear before it was overwhelmed by a tires’ screech and he barely looked over to see two bright beams.
He couldn’t move. The puddles of rain were polluted with a dark substance as the countdown ended and the light turned green.
And that was it.
In his final moments he’d come to accept three facts about himself:
- He let go of others too easily
- He always had questions but never sought answers
- He was fated to live and die alone
Miles faded. His eyes shut as he heard a familiar voice.
“Hello? This is Sam Witwicky–”
The Hatchery was mostly a lost cause. With the Allspark gone and the life of their species drying up, the hatchery should have been the first to perish. For a deca-cycle, pairings had been summoned to the hatchery to see if their hatchling had been able to pull through. Ironhide and Chromia had passed dozens of sparkbroken couples in front of dull or broken pods.
They remained stoic as they walked the final mechanometers to their assigned pod. Almost their entire section was dark, frosted over membranes from starved pods; They knew it was a possibility when the Allspark was announced to have been lost, their section was the furthest from the cube, they’d initially picked that section to buy themselves time to settle. Now it looked like it was too late. An eerie silence settled over the dim corridors. No hatchling screeching, no cheering, no joy.
Optimus had given Ironhide time off, either to welcome a new spark into his unit or to… grieve. Whatever it would be, Ironhide held onto Chromia’s servo and scanned the sections with his optics. Finally, he saw the correct row. The remaining corridor was dark, this row was the last to receive even the slightest drop of energy from the Allspark. The last sparks to shine until The Cube was found.
And a quick skim landed on a tiny pod. LC-M-16, that’s us …
Neither of them moved. Ironhide and Chromia had already faced an insurmountable loss earlier with Kalis falling into Decepticon servos and countless of their fellow Autobots dying… their sparks were heavy enough.
But the pod, even as tiny as it was, emitted a soft glow. Ironhide looked to Chromia, “I can open it if you want to look away”
Chromia wrapped an arm around herself but shook her head, her optics welded to the pod, “No, we said we’d do it together. And that’s what we’ll do”
Together, they opened it. A press of a button sent a jolt through the pod, hopefully giving the hatchling enough energy to emerge on its own. They stood back and watched. A moment passed and then a tiny claw punctured the membrane. Ironhide held his intake. Another claw, the gap was wide enough that the itty hatchling pushed through. Ironhide reached out and grabbed it before it could fall.
And then he was holding his newly hatched sparkling.
The malleable silver protoform curled up in his servos, tinier than any hatchling Ironhide had ever seen or heard of. Chromia gently cupped its helm with a smile on her faceplate.
“Looks like we have a little mech on our servos,” Chromia commented.
“And a lot of work,” Ironhide huffed.
It isn’t often that afterlives intertwine. There’s a place for every species to meet its final rest. But for this soul, an exception has been made at the request of six others.
“You were not cowardice, only human. So we ask if given the chance… would you try again?”
“Yes– please, I’ll be better. I’ll be a better friend, a better son, a better person– please–”
“You need only try.”