Chapter Text
Astrotrain woke up from what felt like the best recharge he had gotten in his entire life.
Really, he couldn’t remember the last time he had gotten to rest this well. The shuttle-train turned around, snuggling in the insulation sheets, allowing himself to enjoy the feeling.
He got to do that for exactly three seconds before remembering what he was supposed to be doing.
What he wasn’t currently doing.
“Frag,” Astrotrain cursed, sitting straight and looking around the berth, not finding the sparkling he was supposed to be watching.
He wanted to smack himself.
“Cannon!” Astrotrain called the sparkling as he leapt out of the berth, almost falling on his face after getting tangled on the sheets. Thankfully for him, that allowed him to see the two nubs popping out from under the berth.
He sighed in relief, “There you are.” He grabbed her by the nubs and tried to pull her out, only to quickly realize that this was going to take more effort than he initially thought it would.
“BEEEEEEEP!” Cannon squeaked, apparently holding onto something since she was heavier than usual.
Astrotrain groaned. “Cannon, come on. It’s dirty there.” But she still refused to let go of whatever she was holding.
The shuttle-train sighed. He should have known better than to try to reason with Blitzwing’s creation.
Pulling stronger this time, Astrotrain managed to get Cannon out. With her, came what she had been holding: A red chest.
Fear filled his frame. He quickly tried to put it under the bed again, to hide it from anyone who could see it, but then Cannon tried to stop him with her dumb little nubs and Astrotrain realized how stupid it was for him to be acting this way.
What was he so afraid of?
Astrotrain sat on the floor, trying to pull himself together. While at it, he watched how Cannon had started to mess with the chest’s padlock. He let out a laugh. “Are you trying to open it?” He asked, now more calm. Cannon didn't answer, of course, but the determination in her little face told him enough.
Ignoring Cannon’s beeps of protest, he pulled the chest closer to him and placed it in the space between his crossed legs, turning it around to make the padlock face him. Cannon, who still wanted to open it, quickly crawled towards him and tried to climb his leg to get better access to it. Astrotrain grabbed her and sat her on his right leg.
“Watch this,” he said, transforming his finger into an odd shape. Then, he grabbed the padlock and, cycling a deep ventilation, he inserted it into the hole of the padlock. With a click, it opened to reveal…
His trinket collection.
A bunch of shiny, small things he had picked up from planets he had visited over the years, each of them holding a story that Astrotrain remembered vividly.
He picked up one that sat at the top of the pile, a purple pebble.
“What have I told you about bringing trash to the hab?!” His mentor had screamed when he found it on Astrotrain’s desk, during one of the many times he barged into his room.
Iron Sky was a dark grey, almost black shuttle. As an old mech from the first generations, he had lived through the worst of the Dark Age and had come through the other side, intact enough to tell it.
And he did tell it, all the time.
Astrotrain knew that firsthand. “It’s not trash…” The younger mech said as he lowered his gaze, in an effort to not look at his mentor in the optics. When it came to shuttles, Iron Sky wasn’t particularly big. Actually, Astrotrain was quite bigger than he was.
Still, somehow, he had always managed to make him feel small.
The older shuttle huffed. “Really? What use does this scrap have?”
No answer that Astrotrain could come up with was ever going to satisfy his mentor. He knew that. Still, he tried, “... I think it’s pretty.”
“Ha!” Iron Sky barked. “Pwetty, he says,” he mocked him in a high-pitched voice. “Do you think that me and my clan brought this city up from ruins by bringing with us every pwetty thing we found in our way?”
Astrotrain grimaced, “No-”
“No. And you know why? Because we couldn’t afford to lose space like that! Our alt-modes were so cramped, sometimes to the point of making us sick, but we put up with it! Because it was our duty. Staniz needed us.” And, suddenly, he trailed off, his gaze getting lost somewhere in the wall.
It took him a second to start talking again, “It still does.” Iron Sky tried to say it like a statement, but it ended up sounding more like he was reassuring himself.
The older shuttle often took pride in his heritage. His clan had laid the foundations for what would become the thriving Staniz and, therefore, he claimed to carry the greatest of legacies. It was clear, however, that said legacy had been completely forgotten. The city had moved onto better things, growing past the need for shuttles like them. Because of it, they ended up living in a shitty part of the city, taking the jobs nobody wanted. Most of the others move out or perish, one by one until only Iron Sky was left. Iron Sky, the warrior, one of the last survivors of the Dark Age was nothing but old news.
Still, he refused to let go. “You have one job, Skyflight.” The older shuttle declared to his apprentice. “One single thing that makes you worth something. Stop getting distracted with meaningless stuff.” And with that, he threw the pebble out of the window.
Astrotrain didn't even dare to try to reach for it.
“This is all there is.” Astrotrain heard him say from the door frame, before finally leaving the room. The grey shuttle stayed where he sat.
The words sank in.
…
Astrotrain huffed at the memory.
Old bastard. Astrotrain stopped hearing from him when he left. Again, nobody cared about him. He was probably rusting somewhere in Cybertron, if there was even anything left of him to rust.
The shuttle-train brushed a finger through the surface of the pebble. The impact of the fall gave it a crack that it still carried to this day. Astrotrain was sad when he had discovered that, back when he went looking for it after Iron Sky went to recharge. He lamented the condition he found the pebble in, believing that the crack had ruined its beauty. Now, however, he didn’t care that much. He found himself grateful to have found it at all, to still have it.
Cannon started to reach for it. A smile appeared on Astrotrain's face and he brought it closer to her. “Do you like it?” The sparkling took it with her nubs, smiled, opened her intake and– “DON’T EAT IT!” The shuttle-train screeched, taking it away from her.
Having lost what she thought was a delicious looking snack, the sparkling frowned and her lip started to wobble.
Knowing the drill by now, Astrotrain rolled his optics. He opened his chassis compartment to take out a box of rust sticks (courtesy of Skywarp and Rumble, who had been too busy fighting over them to notice when he took them). “Here, you greedy thing.” He said, handing Cannon a rust stick that she happily took. The sparkling didn’t have any teeth yet, so she ate rust sticks by sucking on them until they disintegrated. This would always leave her a sticky mess, but she was already dirty from her under-the-berth adventures, so she needed a bath either way.
Astrotrain decided to worry about it later. The shuttle-train noticed that, despite how much she seemed to be enjoying the rust stick, she continued to stare at the pebble.
“It’s not food,” he told her. “It’s a pretty thing I found on a planet I visited a long time ago.” Cannon looked at him with her big, wide optics. “Do you want me to tell you how I found it?” He asked her.
Which was dumb, of course. At this stage there was no way that she could actually understand him–
“Beep!”
But still. “Well,” Astrotrain started. “It was a really, really foggy planet...”