Nature of the Beast

One-Shot: Intertwined

*Takes place after the Epilogue

Note: Just some cute, love-y fluff and the culmination of Sen and Force's relationship. Plus some yummy symbolism to go with it. :3 I should've put this out sooner but I got distracted with classes and other stories and work and everything else. Sorry!

They were going to get in trouble. Charity would have her helm on a silver platter if she found out how far from the scrapyard they'd wandered after having told her they wouldn't go far. In fact, she probably already knew how far they were; they were within scanning range. But she assuaged that fear with a simple truth: it was earned. The physical privacy was a relief after being hounded by the healer for hours and hours. She didn't fault her for that of course; she had been doing what she was trained to do. But now it was just her Praxian holding her in his arms, purring like the world's gentlest earthquake – a deep, low thrum that coursed through her whole frame like a lullaby. Happiness rolled off him like the tide and made her happy in turn.

Happiness, Sentenza mused. What an odd thing to feel after such a horrendously bad day.

"I never actually said thank you to Optimus or Sideswipe," he realized and shifted a little. "I should probably –"

She put a hand on his lip-plates. "Oh, do shut up."

He chuckled. "Fine."

"You really need to grow a backstrut," she smirked. "It's a little pathetic that you yield to me all the time."

"I'm just being polite..." he argued meekly. "Besides, the last thing you need right now is getting worked up."

She winced. The weld on her chassis, the only indicator left of Steeljaw's blade, pulsed with dull pain. Charity had done good job of polishing it down to hide it but not even her skilled hands had been able to make it, or the lingering pain, totally disappear. It would take time for that.

He let a hand hover over the injury. "You didn't have to do that, you know," he murmured.

"You saved my sorry rear end so many times, it was high time I paid you back."

"Not with your life!" he sputtered. "I'm not worth that!"

"I was aiming to have the blade go through anywhere but my spark chamber. I timed and angled the dive-lunge bad. I was sloppy. That was entirely my fault."

Her Praxian stared at her briefly, jaw slackened. He couldn't seem to process that her act had been far from an impulsive decision. Maybe that was her fault. She had always been bad at expressing affection for anyone. Ironic, really, that she, a blunt-tongued Kaonian, had never been upfront to him.

She used two digits to close his mouth. "Stop acting so surprised. I owed you a favor; I've owed you one for years now. I just executed that favor poorly is all."

In hindsight, she thought, maybe "executed" was the wrong word to use after today's events.

Counterforce sighed before he eyed her seriously. "Look, Sen, when returning favors to me don't, for Primus' sake, put your life on the line to fulfill it. I am not worth that."

Sentenza smiled and put a hand on his cheek. "Maybe you are. Just a little."

The shock in her Praxian's optics softened. He put his own hand over hers and smiled. She was a fool for never seeing that smile for what it was until now.

"I'm serious though. Don't. Please," he said. "I can't stand see to see you hurt. I love you too much to let you endanger yourself for my sake."

There it was. The word. Love. Out in the open. It was a relief to know for certain but in a way it was a terror, too. Love meant closeness, and caring, and trust, and a dozen other things that to her paranoid processor spelled out "risk." Counterforce must have known that, too, or sensed it somehow with that uncanny people-reading power he had. The hand still on her cheek pulled her in a little closer so he could rest his own helm against hers.

"See?" he murmured. "Nothing to be afraid of."

Content, she leaned into him. His other arm wrapped around her.

He went quiet after that, making his happy purring all the easier to hear. But the fear lingered. She could feel the steady pulse of energy hiding just beneath his chassis. Vulnerable, her mind hissed. No, not her mind. The shadow-mind, the dark echo that invaded hers night after night, one that had only gotten louder and stronger and angrier during her stay on this planet. Knowing why only made her more fearful of being so close to someone she cared about. She'd already proven the danger she posed to him. Sentenza could still see the faintest little hint of the slash wound to his abdomen – all because she had let her guard down.

Counterforce noticed her looking at it. "If I could trade wounds, I would," he admitted quietly.

"Don't be stupid. At least the wounds I suffer were my fault," she grumbled back.

One brow ridge rose. "So you do admit that the Nightdemon is a part of you?"

Sentenza found herself floundering. "What? No, I mean – maybe? Yes? I don't know. Can something be part of you but not of you?"

"It's not like you to start a philosophical debate in these situations," her Praxian noted with some amusement.

She frowned playfully. "But it is like you. Go on. Philosophize to me."

He shifted a little into a more comfortable position. "I would say yes," he mused. "Vector's words made it sound like the tainted half is physically separate to the other half even though they still technically are part of a whole. But let me put it another way. Imagine having a limb removed, and a new one installed: a standard medical practice for our kind. The new limb becomes a part of the individual, functioning just as the old limb did. But is it of the individual? It wasn't before; arguably, it will never totally be of like the old one was. The replacement came from outside, and can be different from the original in any number of ways. It is still a part of them, though. Do you agree?"

Sentenza let that analogy mull over in her mind for some time.

"I agree," she conceded in the end.

The Seeker put her helm back on his chassis.

She noticed he started to get somewhat awkward then. He squirmed a little.

"What?" she demanded.

"I – well, since we're on this topic," Counterforce started shyly, "I was wondering if – we both admit our affections. We've been together for a while now. So, do you think now would be appropriate for me to – that we maybe take the next step?"

"Did you just – are you proposing?" she nearly laughed.

"I don't know. Am I doing it wrong? That was a terrible segue, wasn't it? That was way too direct. I –" he looked away, embarrassed, clearly wishing he could move his hands to hide his face.

"That was direct enough for any Kaonian to accept it. Just try not to stammer so much."

The embarrassment lit up into happiness. "Can I take a Praxian approach then, now?"

"Depends on what that is," she retorted.

Counterforce's right hand fished into a subspace compartment on his hip. From it, he pulled out a strange little object made of metal, roughly the size of her fist. It was a sphere, beautifully and intricately painted in two distinct halves, each shaped somewhat like teardrops. One side was painted a deep, polished, velvet black, with a silver full moon trailed after by an entourage of silver stars. The other side was painted a glittering but soft silver with a delicate sun frilled with dainty flares – except, the sun's disk was dark, like the dark of the other half. Each side, she realized, was the opposite of the other in every way, yet the core of the celestial bodes were so similar that they could be swapped and it would make no difference. The silver moon could be placed within the sun's disk, yet so too could the solar flares be placed in the stead of the stars.

Sentenza stared at it. "Did – did you make this?"

"For you, yes," he said, smiling brightly.

"I had no idea you were a closet artist," she noted. "Poet, sure, not artist."

"Ah, erm, Zodiac helped," he admitted shyly.

Of course the little Painter had helped, she thought – and no evidence had been left lying around to give the game away, for that matter. Clever bird.

"It's beautiful," she breathed, "but I don't understand what it is."

"It represents us," he told her simply. "A day is not complete without a night to end it, but a night is not complete without a sunrise." He pressed it into her hands. "If you let me, if you accept, I will be your other half."

The black Seeker stared at him. "You want to –? No. That's too dangerous. What if it infects you?"

"Vector said it only affects Perseverance Blades."

"Yes, but by bonding your spark to mine, wouldn't that –"

"I would be part of you, without being of you. You are missing part of yours, Sen. I'm offering mine to stand in that missing half's place."

The trusting sincerity in his voice made Sentenza want to hit him. Stupid, trusting idiot – he always was! Yet...Vector had said that "he was her treatment." What if that went beyond the physical help Counterforce so readily offered? Would the taint be drowned enough to give her her thoughts back? But that she was even having to ask those questions made her wariness return. Going forward on nothing more than guesswork was terribly reckless – a risk, foolhardy and done in ignorance.

But it was a risk, she decided, she was willing to take.

"I guess we're both risk-taking idiots tonight," she mused in dark humor.

"Haven't we always been?" her Praxian wondered back in lighter humor.

She chuckled, "Isn't that mainly you lately?"

He gave her a hesitant look, "Eh...well...a bit, I guess. Arguably not the best way to prove I care. I won't lie: I'd rather be the one hurt instead of you."

Sentenza smiled. "At least you're honest. But if I'm not allowed to put myself in danger for your sake, don't vice versa it."

"Fine."

"Good boy."

He smiled back. "Then I'm yours, if you'll have me."

She accepted.

He bowed, closed his optics, and his chassis opened up. Inside was a brilliant white and gold sphere of light.

Sentenza was more cautious. Only after she had checked her surroundings twice did she, too, bow and reveal that which lay inside her. Violet and red light clashed angrily on his paler plating.

Red met gold. Violet met white.

They both blacked out.

The world came back into focus eventually – only, Sentenza noted, it wasn't the woods beyond the salvage yard. Instead, it was a vast dark void lit by moonlight from an absent moon. The ground beneath her was solid but it looked more like an oil spill, gently roiling.

She thought for a brief, terrifying moment that something had gone wrong when a groan forced her attention to the side. Counterforce groggily pushed himself up. Other than being disoriented, he looked fine to her. In fact, unless it was the false moonlight shining on him, he seemed to be glowing faintly. Looking down, she found her own hands to have a faint red-tinged glow. Her thoughts instantly went back to the "something wrong" chain once she noticed her hands were not symmetrical. One hand had a red glow, while the other had a faint violet glow.

"...So that's what he meant..." Counterforce muttered.

"What's happening? What's going on?" she demanded of him. "Are we –?"

Her Praxian looked around.

"Bound together, strings of color
to weave a newer tapestry;
The two apart will thus be fuller
in grand and gloried symmetry," he muttered.

She flung her arms up. "Is that a yes or a no?!"

"Don't panic. I think this is part of the process," Counterforce assured her.

The ground rumbled and gently shook below them. Her worry only spiked when the floor began to...flow, for lack of a better term, to form a dark, oily river that rushed past under their trods. It flowed and flowed before it began to gush and rise into a waterfall flowing in reverse.

"Is that part of the process?" she asked warily.

For once, Counterforce was thrown off-balance. Anxiety briefly gleamed in his two-color optics.

"That's not the process. That's – oh slag..."

She watched in horror as the reverse waterfall wrung itself into a four-eyed serpent. Its harpoon-tipped tongue lashed out at them both.

Sentenza pushed him. "Get out! You have to get out of here!" she shrieked.

The serpent chuckled, "Foolish boy. You think you can 'cure' her of me?"

"Maybe not cure, but I can slag well stop you from hurting her all the time!" he fired back.

All humor washed out of the serpent. It screamed and, in a dark wave, rushed at Counterforce with the force of a tsunami. Her Praxian put his hand up to block, perhaps fire off light to deflect the Nightdemon, but no light came out. Counterforce was hit and swallowed by the dark. Amidst the black storm, his gold glow faded to nothing.

"No!" screamed Sentenza.

When the rush subsided, all that was left was what looked like a statue of her Praxian, carved out of dark stone, his hand still raised up in defense and his mouth open in a silent shout.

Sentenza collapsed to her knee pikes. Was that it? Was he...was he gone?

Grief and rage surged in as one, made manifest in a howling scream: "Why won't you let me be happy, you glitch?!"

"You could be happy if you stopped fighting me..." purred the Nightdemon. "Give up this facade. Think of the freedom. No morals. No holding back. No –"

"SHUT UP!"

Her curse seemed stunned at the retort, if only for a moment.

Krr-crrk-ccrrrk...

Sentenza turned at the sound. The statue of Counterforce had developed a single crack that brilliant gold light seeped out of. Another crack shot off from it. More and more spider-webbed out until, in a final crack, the "statue" came back to life. If Counterforce had been glowing before, he was positively radiant now – blazing starlight shaped into a body. And the expression on his face warned he was done being polite.

"WHAT?!" shrieked the Nightdemon.

"Try that again," Counterforce said, his face stony.

Screaming, the cursed serpent lunged. Right as its hideous fanged face got within arm's reach of him, her Praxian pulled a fist back and swung. Light exploded out from the strike, like a miniature supernova complete with rippling shock waves, and the Nightdemon and all its tainted darkness was sent hurtling into the void. Even the landscape changed: once shadowy ground turned to a shimmering pale mist, and the moonless sky above lit up with a newfound sun peeking out from behind some clouds.

Counterforce stood for a while staring into the distance. Then, her Praxian turned to her. His familiar, soft smile returned.

"See?" he shrugged. "I told you it can't hurt me."

The black Seeker let out an inarticulate cry, rushed him, and flung her arms around him. His arms did the same for her. Somehow, his light didn't burn.

"Can we call it even now?" he asked.

She laughed, "I guess that counts."

It's a shortie, I know, but I consider this an exercise in concision.