Chapter Text
SCAVENGER
Spherocobaltite: rare, easily scratched, pretty.
Granite: common, versatile, useful.
“If they held you at gun point – a step away from death – what would you say?”
Scavenger internally jumped at the question. His surprise must have showed because Dead End shifted a little. Sure not much more than that could have been displayed because Scavenger didn’t have a proper face. But he understood how people shifted, in and out: “I… I don’t know? How can you know that if you’re not there?”
Dead End made his glass slide from hand to hand: “I know what I’d say. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”
Scavenger sighed. Part of it was of course because of the other’s behavior. He suspected there was more, because he felt suddenly anxious. Nothing new, he could manage it. Still, he humored the stunticon: “…what would you say?”
“I’m not telling you. It’s not about me. Well, nothing is. But you know what I mean.”
I really don’t, thought the excavator, and still his anxiety was increasing, minutely.
“Here’s an exercise for you, before you die,” and at that Scavenger held his glass a little tighter and his visor took a cross expression, “think about it. You want to know what your last words would be.”
“Why do you care? Not about my words. About last words at all. Isn’t this your whole point? No thing means a thing?” He was being a little cruel. His apprehension somewhat lessened. Ugh. He knew where he was taking that attitude from.
Dead End stopped in his motion and went utterly still: “You are so wrong,” he said slowly, pinning him on the spot with a stare, “if it didn’t matter, I would be dead already.”
Scavenger wasn’t getting a thing of what he was hearing. Especially that last part. What the frag did that even mean?! And why did it give him so much irritation? Why did Dead End have to be so serious about it all the time? And why couldn’t he get serious about something like that?
Why couldn’t he remember the last time he took something that seriously?
He finished his last energon, putting the glass and straw down: “If you think that’s so important, I’ll give it a shot. Goodbye.”
He was in his closet and he felt stupidly sad. A lot of his things had gone. He had cleared the zone himself or nothing new could fit in. He still kept a couple of useless or pretty things but still it made him feel hopeless. He had not entered the closet for days for that very reason.
A knock on the door made him jump. He turned around and his mood immediately lifted: “Hey!”
Scrapper looked around, hands on his hips: “Oh wow. Didn’t know you stored air too in here. You should have this air take some air too, it stinks. Hehe.”
Scavenger brought his shovel around and scratched at it nervously: “Sorry.”
Scrapper made a friendly gesture with his hand to dismiss it: “We are going out. Are you coming?”
The excavator looked suspicious: “Out like… out out?”
“Out like the frag out of here.”
He sniggered: “Sure thing. Let’s go.”
He couldn’t stop thinking about Dead End’s words. He just couldn’t. He had tried to subside the anxiety he had felt and he thought that a clear sky and the presence of his team could do it.
Instead he was there. Sitting on the edge of a small cliff, trees partially obscuring him while the others were laughing some meters away.
Last words, last words… what could his last words be? I’m sorry? I don’t wanna die? Why are you doing this?
He felt stupid. He really had never thought about it and, well, everyone had surely thought about it at least once in their life – damn, they were in a war – and it wasn’t even the fact that he was positive he could die someday, that he wasn’t invulnerable to it because – c’mon Scavvy, Devastator is just a big guy with two armies on his tail – so why?
Why was it so important?
He heard Mixmaster cackling in the distance, saw Long Haul shoving him and Bonecrusher stretching on the grass like he owned the place and he asked himself why he wasn’t there with them.
Or why they didn’t come after him when he moved away.
Alright, he had to pin it down.
Words, words and words…
Ok, what words would describe death? End. End and… hm… Void? Absence of thinking?
Hm. He felt like he wasn’t thinking at all just now.
Uff.
Why in the pit was Dead End always thinking about that? Could he reach to him in that department?
Let’s try.
You wanna die. Plain and simple. You wanna die because you feel useless. Desperate. Unimportant. Unworthy and undesired and still useless and, and…
Oh damn, he stilled. He felt that. Oh, he felt every single word. He wasn’t thinking about Dead End.
He was thinking about himself.
“No…” he whispered, and briefly put his hands on his face, hunching. He started shaking lightly, feeling so angry for it. No. No he wasn’t useless! He was valuable. Competent. He knew that. He started shaking his head because he knew exactly what he would say at gun point and it was—
Please. Don’t do it. I still have so much to prove.
And he was taking time for granted.
“Hey,” came a voice and this time he really and soundly startled, making the bot approaching him stop, “Whoa! Sh. What the hell are you doing here?”
Scavenger regarded Bonecrusher and he felt angry all of a sudden; he put a hand ahead and said, out of the blue: “Stay there. What would you say if you were on the verge of death?”
The bulldozer looked at him like he was crazy. He took his time to answer: “Right. I won’t pretend to know why you are here all alone and thinking about that so I’ll just answer, to be pragmatic. What would I say? I don’t fragging know pipsqueak. What the frag, who knows that.”
“Dead End does.”
Bonecrusher huffed, amused: “Sure he does. Everything that leaves his vocalizer is a damn death sentence. Who cares. Why do you care? Where does this come from?”
Scavenger suddenly understood that all of that probably looked and sounded very random. Alright. He deflated a little. And sighed: “I don’t know Crusher it’s just… I don’t like what I’d say in such a case. It just sounds so… stupid.”
Bonecrusher flatly looked at him: “Listen. One thing I know? You think too much. Like. You think so much that you prefer ditching us to try to understand absolute slag just because a depressed slagger says he knows what he would say at death doors. My Primus Scav, frag that, I care about life. I care about fragging with life, not finding a fashionable way to end it with words. What have you thought about?”
“I… Please don’t?”
Bonecrusher rolled his optics: “Listen up. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll go back,” and he pointed at his back with a thumb, “and before you go back there with us I want you to think one simple thing: what would you say if it wasn’ ending? Wait, don’t answer,” he put his hands ahead, “just think about it.” He then got closer and put a hand on the other’s helm, “With all that thinking in here,” and he tapped said helm, “I’m sure you’ll find an answer. Come reach us when you are done.”
And with that he was gone.
Scavenger watched him go among the others and he started thinking. Hm. If it wasn’t an ending… well. Then… any other day? What should he think of any other day?
What would he say.
Oh he had much to say. Too many words and adjectives. Some good, some bad. He had too much on his hands. He needed a filter.
And… what if the filter was Dead End’s request exactly?
Right, let’s not think about death because he had to think about life.
So, words about himself. Words he would say. Aaaand here we go again, BAD words happening in his brain. Scratch those. He wanted something different. He didn’t want to be pitiful and stutter d-O-n-t.
He sighed again and suddenly stilled. His mind went to his closet. To his now almost empty closet. What a tragedy. BUT. The closet was there so he could express himself so, good, let’s do some inventory.
He had a pristine slab of steel, prettily burned on one of its angles, giving it a glazed effect. No, nope, it was just pretty to look at.
Maybe that bucket of tempered glass? Looked like diamonds but the shards were so much more simple, honest and… A little too much simple. He loved putting his hand in the bucket and look at all those shiny little pieces moving between his fingers, but nothing more.
Resin. He had a lot of clots of that, he even made a composition out of that, a yellowish, pretty melting and bubbly three.
Uffff. No. Life sentences.
Who am I?
I’m simple. Straight forward. I do worry too much and that is probably detrimental and opposed to simple but…
He scratched his shovel again. Long Haul always said his tail was cute. Scrapper that they wouldn’t go far if he didn’t know how to use such an amazing instrument.
He thought of that pyramid he made of irregular pieces of granite he had collected near a collapsed building. The thing was gone because it was grey, plain and honestly…
And honestly, he hadn’t wanted to throw that away. He had made precise work with it. He glued every single piece. There had been nice contrasts of white, grey and black and it had looked solid, reliable. He didn’t know how that happened. There was always something he wanted to express about himself in what he did. He understood now why he had made a pyramid out of it.
He had thrown away another thing he wished he hadn’t and that was one of the nicest rocks he had found that cycle. It was a fragile thing of which he had recently discovered its Earth’s name but it had purple minerals on it, like a lavender garden of tiny, pretty and chaotic structures.
And he had thrown that away.
Suddenly he went straight as a rod, bringing his arms close to his body in delighted surprise.
He knew his last words.
He found Dead End in the same spot of the other day. He was tracing the rim of his cube with a finger, looking ahead of himself. Scavenger got near, put his hands on the table and looking straight at the other said: “Too bad.”
Dead End stopped in his motions: “That’s it? Then you are dead.”
Scavenger shook his head, lifting a finger: “Not at all. I’d bargain.”
“And if your opponent doesn’t want to?”
“Then I’ll have more words for him. Until the last very second. Take me prisoner. Are you sure about what you are doing? This is a mistake. Take your pick. I’m not letting that shot fire.”
Dead End sighed, slumping: “You’re so naïve.” Then he got up, taking his glass with him and before leaving he stopped and turned towards him: “Well… at least you cared.” And then he left.
Scavenger shrugged. Of course he cared, it was his life. He didn’t have a fancy sentence to give in the face of death but he had pretty things to express how much he enjoyed life.
And it was time to go scavenging again. And maybe get back the things he had thrown away.