"We should've heard something by now," Aileron mutters ostensibly to herself, but she knows Thunderclash can hear her across the otherwise-silent bridge. It's just them sitting here, Hot Shot and Ricochet are hanging out in the common room, or piloting the ship, or recharging—whatever, it's not her problem. He doesn't say a word, but turns away ever so slightly. Guilty? Aileron allows herself to hope. Primus knows he has plenty to be guilty about, as do they all. The deca-cycle or so since their most recent 'adventure' has done nothing to alleviate the hollow, worn-out feeling in her chassis. Perhaps her commander, somewhere behind the smiles and speeches, feels the same?
Hardly matters now. Whatever noble internal struggle Thunderclash is potentially battling, he had already made his choice. Velocitron is far behind them now, and it's clear he has no intention of turning back. The Aileron of two megacycles ago would've been more optimistic. She respected her commander, respected the Wreckers. She really believed in what they were doing.
But back then, she still had Minerva with her.
She'd yet to see Circuit die.
It could be that Thunderclash feels guilty. But more likely, he's just ignoring her. Like he had been every day for the past two megacycles.
"Commander," she tries again anyway, turning to face him fully. Maybe that optimistic part of her isn't quite gone yet.
"Aileron," he flashes her his trademark stupid grin.
"I just worry that we were too quick to leave Velocitron." It would have been trivial to stay an extra deca-cycle or two, just until Minerva was released. Surely he could see that. Is he really so stubborn—so petty—that he would abandon his crew mate—his only medic!—just for the satisfaction of ignoring her advice yet again?
Aileron tries to brush that thought to the side. No, Thunderclash is stubborn but not petty. He didn't do this to spite her. It's much worse: he genuinely does not believe Minerva is in any danger. Neither does he believe there's something wrong with leaving a teammate behind to make their own way back, apparently.
She doesn't start ranting yet, though. At the end of the day, he is still her commander. She owes him some respect.
"I understand your worry, Aileron, I really do. Every cycle that passes without word from Velocitron..." He pauses, formulating his thoughts, but Aileron interjects before he can continue.
"It doesn't sit right with me. We left her behind, Thunderclash!" Yeah, 'we', as if she had had any part in that decision. "Since when do we leave Wreckers behind?"
"We need to have faith that sec-ops will sort this whole mess out soon. Knock Out knows this is nothing more than a big misunderstanding."
"A misunderstanding that should've been cleared up in a few cycles, at most!"
Aileron thinks she sees something in Thunderclash's expression shift. But maybe it's wishful thinking: he's never been one for subtlety before.
"Minerva can handle herself. If something is amiss, she will contact us. But it helps no one if we assume the worst. With so many eyes still on us, we can't afford the risk of returning unless we know she's in trouble."
"It doesn't have to be a risk if you'd let me do my job!" Aileron can't stop herself shouting. How dare he claim to suddenly care about risks, when he's done nothing but put them in completely avoidable danger since he formed the team. "I can get us on Velocitron discretely. You're the one who keeps making our missions spectacles! Our cover's only blown because of you!"
"Aileron—"
"Circuit is dead." The temperature in the room drops. This is tactless, and cruel, and she regrets bringing it up before the words have even left her mouth. Thunderclash visibly flinches. She should apologise and change the subject, but she's too angry to stop now. "You had me planning our cover for cycles then threw it all out on a whim—because god forbid you go one single klik without all eyes on you! And now our..." our friend, she doesn't say. "our teammate is dead."
She doesn't even realise she had stood up until she finds herself inches from Thunderclash's face. He very pointedly avoids eye contact.
Would he still have died if their doctor had been there?
The bridge is silent again.
"Yes," her commander begins, slowly, "I would do anything to change what happened to Circuit... but it is done now. We can think about what we could have done forever and it will get us nowhere. As hard as it might be, all there to do now is look forwards."
Aileron scoffs. "'Look forwards'? By abandoning Minerva too?"
"We have not abandoned Minerva. She'll be back with us soon, Aileron," he says, voice almost imperceptibly edged with frustration. She's been on his team too long to miss it, though. He does not want this conversation to continue. And, as she knows all-too-well, if Thunderclash doesn't want something, there is no force in the galaxy that could convince him otherwise.
She sighs. It was pointless to start this.
"Right, commander." She exits the bridge, still seething, leaving her illustrious leader to stew in his guilt alone.
An apology would have been nice, at the very least. For anything.
It turns out Hot Shot and Ricochet really are in the common room. Aileron hears them idly chatting as she walks past, on her way to her hab suite. She stops by the open door for a moment and considers joining them.
Hot Shot is splayed out on one of the sofas, gesturing animatedly as he speaks. She can't quite make it out, but soon they're both roaring with laughter. She must be missing out on some quality banter, lurking in the doorway like a creep.
The few cycles immediately following their last disaster of a mission weren't nearly this lively. But the gloom didn't last; it never does. Her two hot-headed teammates were even more eager than Thunderclash to act as though nothing had gone wrong. She should be happy to see them doing better, but she can't help how her gaze drifts to the disused controllers left beside the monitor display. There's been no point playing anything without Minerva to thrash them. Aileron was never the video game sort herself, but she enjoyed watching Minerva play. She always got so invested in each race, and so giddy when she'd inevitably win. She loved seeing her like that, so unguarded. Her joy was infectious.
She decides she's been standing there too long to ignore them. "Hey guys," she greets flatly, taking a seat by Ricochet.
"Aileron!" Hot Shot calls out, far too loud, "You've gotta talk some sense into this guy. He—"
"Will you drop it already? It was just something I heard, I never said I believed it!"
Primus, if she has to mediate another one of these guys' arguments right now she might just punch one of them in the teeth. At least if they heard her yelling at their leader a room over, they're too caught up in whatever this is about to care.
She groans. "And what exactly am I talking some sense into him about?"
"He thinks the— what are they, the Ascentionicons? Y'know, the thing that one bot was. He thinks they're gonna overthrow the Senate on Cybertron or something?" Hot Shot ends off his explanation with a big guffaw.
"I never said that! It was just some news thing playing in that bar on Velocitron, it was all about their leader and apparently there's a load of riots going on. Like, remember Brainstorm?"
"Nope."
"C'mon, Brainstorm? You know him! Plane? Scientist? Oh whatever, point is apparently they killed him! Or, they think it was them at least? And then there's the Tether falling—"
"Weren't you supposed to be keeping an eye on Mayhem suspects, not watching that sensationalist scrap?" Aileron interrupts impatiently. She vaguely remembers the Ascenticons from back on Cybertron—but that was a lifetime ago. It's not that she doesn't care, but she's been flying with the Wreckers longer than she ever lived on the planet. Politics from back home just seems so... meaningless out here.
"I can multitask!" Ricochet replies. "And anyway, 's it such a crime to be curious about what's happening? Stuff's going down, I'm telling you! That's where all the action's happening now."
"Last time I checked, there's still plenty of action out here."
"Yeah! 'sides," Hot Shot butts in, not being able to handle keeping his mouth shut a moment longer, "nothing's happened on Cybertron for forever!"
"Other than the Tether falling," Ricochet points out.
"Other than the Tether falling!" He looks like he's going to stop, but apparently thinks better and continues. "And they can just build another one, it's no big deal!"
"Do they know why it fell?" Aileron asks. Ricochet shrugs and opens his mouth to answer, but Hot Shot beats him to it.
"It's big, it's heavy, prob'ly just fell over or something."
"That's so stupid Hothead, it didn't just fall over!"
"Well whatever happened, it left us with no way back to Cybertron. So we won't know what's going on there for a while," Aileron says, before adding, "Not sure I'd want to go back anyway, if things are as bad as you think, Ricochet." The Wreckers are technically Autobots, in the same way they're technically a part of Colonial Security—so, in practice, not at all. She doubts these alleged Ascenticon insurrectionists would care much about the details, though.
"C'mon, aren't you a little curious? I'm curious. What if they need us down there?" Ricochet says, earning another laugh from Hot Shot.
"Yeah, I bet they're just begging for you to come back" — Ricochet wacks him playfully on the shoulder — "Oh if only Ricochet was here! We're so lost without him!"
It's at this point that Aileron stops paying attention. It's not that she doesn't enjoy their company, it's just that Hot Shot and Ricochet are best experienced in moderation. That, or with the aid of copious amounts of engex. They're cut from the same cloth as Thunderclash; they're brash, impulsive daredevils who make her job just that smidgen harder.
But they have each other. They can bicker all they want, but they're not fooling anybody. She can barely even conceive of them apart, 'Hot Shot and Ricochet' has become one word to her (and she trusts that no one is more upset about it than the two of them.) If it really came down to it, they would move the heavens for each other.
If it was Hot Shot that they had left on Velocitron, Ricochet wouldn't be avoiding Thunderclash to go zone out in the common room. He'd yell and he'd argue, he'd probably make such a fuss about it that they'd have no choice but to stay on Velocitron—anything to make him shut up. If they somehow managed to drag him back into space without his partner, he'd fight it with all his fury every step of the way.
And if Thunderclash still refused, Aileron suspects he might just hijack one of the ship's two escape pods and get Hot Shot back himself.
This would be a very foolish move on his part, of course. Knowing Ricochet, he wouldn't have any sort of plan to get on Velocitron unnoticed—and stealth would be key, if the worst case scenario was true and this did turn out to be a prison break. Not to mention the difficulty of even finding Hot Shot—he wouldn't check the city's layout, the one Aileron had so painstakingly recorded during her initial plan. If he somehow managed it anyway, he'd need a way off the planet and back to the Wreckers. And then there's energon to worry about. He'd need to steal some from the ship's reserves before his escape, enough to keep him going during the flight to Velocitron. Not too much though, he wouldn't want to cause any problems for his teammates. Even if they had abandoned his dearest friend.
Yes, those are all the things that this hypothetical Ricochet would have to consider, in a hypothetical world where it had been Hot Shot left on Velocitron instead of Minerva. Things he would likely ignore, because he is no tactician. Which is why he would fail.
Aileron sinks a little deeper into her seat.
She thinks about Minerva, how she'd get so embarrassed when she'd realise how excited she'd gotten and quickly try to swerve back into her detached nonchalance. About how, not too long ago, a mission had taken them to a small, almost deserted planetoid. It was covered in snow and icy crystals that reflected the stars like miniature galaxies. Between the chaos, she and Minerva had found a moment alone to breathe and rest. Minerva had talked and talked, and there was no trace of that detached nonchalance, or any embarrassment. Not when it was just the two of them.
She thinks about her first real row with Thunderclash, now a staple of each new mission, and how Minerva spoke to her afterwards. She'd been so understanding. Not like Hot Shot and Ricochet, not like Circuit, and certainly not like Thunderclash. For the first time, Aileron met someone who understood her frustration. Minerva knew what it was like to always be cast to the side, keeping everything together in the background, alone, while everyone else got the praise and respect and love.
Neither of them craved the spotlight like their teammates did. In that, they found a connection. They had each other. That was enough.
Aileron excuses herself from the conversation she had not been participating in for several minutes anyway and walks back to her hab suite. Then, she gets planning.