And an epilogue because I got inspired

-"Rise and shine!" Steve heard Knock Out's voice, felt a prick of a needle and registered his retreating footsteps.

The atmosphere around them felt somewhat different. There seemed to be no moisture in the air, for which his circuits thanked him but there was a large amount of dust. His vents wheezed as he sharply invented before releasing air from the ventilation systems in one sharp gust.

-"Watch where you're unclogging your filters!" Somebody next to him growled, Steve apologised. Then looked up to the source of injection - an energon drip?

-"Is this some sort of a joke?" Serengeti's drowsy voice rung somewhere in vicinity. So, there were more eradicons around and Serengeti was there too!

Steve reset his optic band and winced at the buildup of pressure in his processor. The place looked like a run-down warehouse of sorts. There were no berths, only mats on the floor on which he and a number of others lay - everyone had an energon drip...

-"You wish." The unnamed vehicon by his side groaned in response, sheltering his optic band from the harsh overhead lighting, and complaining about pain in the processor. Steve's own helm-ache was starting to catch up with him and he rubbed his cranial port.

-"Ser?"

-"Keep it down, especially You." Serengeti mumbled somewhere to the left, he was usually irritable right after recharge so Steve did not hold it against him.

Despite the helm-ache the eradicon was determined to get up. His vision blurred, gyros trying to re-calibrate. - "Just keep talking Ser! I'll find you!" The post-stasis dizziness announced itself moments later and he collapsed back on the mat, well, at least there was nowhere else to fall into. Hence stubbornly he started to crawl towards the sound of Serengeti's voice.

-"Steve! The Pit you are doing?!" Lucy yelled from across the room.

-"Crawling?"

-"~Quiet~" A feeble groan carried from the far corner of the room.

-"Get back to your berth...uh, mat, before I tie you to it." Lucy switched to an angry whisper. He had adopted a certain air of authority since they last saw him and behaved in a manner which indicated that he had been up for a while already.

-"I gather this is not the Allspark so where are we?" The helm-ache vehicon posed the question Steve had wanted to ask.

-"Cybertron." Lucy stated casually while he busied himself with taking vital data from eradicons who had not yet regained consciousness.

-"No way. Last I remember we were doing the angry mob thing back on Earth." Serengeti seemed to be slurring his words much less now.

-"Yes, well, at least the Autobots kept their word about not offlining us while we were in stasis." Lucy was uncharacteristically talkative which Steve took as a good sign.

-"It's nice to hear you Lucy."

-"Wait, Cybertron - the place we have been fighting for? The land of metallic rainbows and liquid energon?" The vehicon seemed to have processed the information but nobody was sure if he was being sarcastic or not.

-"I would not quite put it that way." Lucy muttered almost to himself. -"But you'll be the judge of that soon enough."

-"When can we leave this place?"

-"Whenever you can stand." Lucy threw over his shoulder as he ventured to readjust Steve's energon drip. "They are onlining us in batches. Wheeljack's busy gauging by how much they should increase the energon production before they release us from stasis."

By the time Steve was properly able to maneuver himself in space with energon drip in tow, the room was full with awake and groggy eradicons and Lucy hurried off to take care of them. Knock Out came in a couple more times to check on those who had a harder time emerging from the stasis but in general it was a sort of dizzy assembly of eradicons. Some were just sitting on their mats - regaining their bearings, some staggered and some managed maintaining more stable trajectories but all were confused.

Serengeti had issues with his injured leg so he gestured to Steve to come and join him when Lucy came by again.

-"I thought we had fixed it." Lucy whispered.

-"You had but I wanted a moment of your undivided attention." Lucy made a non-comitant sound but gave no indication of leaving.

-"How long have we been out and what's happening now?"

-"6 months and you will get a task assigned. So far we are just working for them." Steve motioned to them to keep quiet as one of the Autobots entered the room, it was a yellow and black one. He looked around a little unsure but then started talking.

-"Fellow cybertronians, please do not be alarmed. You are our fellow mechanisms and we ...uh."

The bot stuttered, apparently the speech was as jarring and unnatural to him as it was to everybody else in the room, Knock Out had cringed while listening. The Autobot cursed under his breath, cleared his intake and then started again.

-"Sorry about that, what I meant to say was was - Hi, I am Bumblebee and I hope stasis is wearing off fine, you are on Cybertron, this is not a prison and nobody will harm you as long as you do not harm us. Try not to wander off, if you have any issues tell me or any of the medics which have been tending you. Once you feel stable enough you will get an introduction about what has been happening."

Nobody spoke, but also nobody rioted or threw things at him, so that was definitely a step above how matters had gone down before. Knock Out showed a 'thumbs up' across the room and approached the yellow scout for a debriefing.

The eradicon trio observed.

-"Soo, they are all lovey-dovey?" Serengeti whispered tilting his helm towards the two grounders.

-"More like a pain for everyone else to look at - they have been tiptoeing around eachother for as long as I am online." Lucy muttered

-"And how long is that?" Steve butted in.

-"4 months, I have been training under Ratchet and Knock Out, medics, apparently are very valuable." Lucy his attention to Bumblebee who had called him and quickly whispered to the other two -"Whenever you feel stable we can sneak out." Then he was off again, to have a talk with Knock Out and the yellow Autobot.

They ventured out later that day while it was still light outside, Steve and Serengeti supporting eachother while Lucy lead the way. Nobody stopped them when they walked through the creaky door and into an open field just before their base.

They stood there, taking in the surroundings. The temperature was different and the light felt strange on their plating.

-"Sooo…this is the ugly part right?" Serengeti looked around apprehensively.

-"This is the every part." Lucy drawled with inflection which sounded very much like a manner in which Knock Out spoke.

Bleak, flaky wasteland stretched before them in every direction, skeletons of crumbling buildings stood out starkly against the horizon.

-"I can't believe this is what we have been fighting for…" Steve still could not believe his visual feedback. -" We lost Mina and Vik for This?" He wanted to include Soundwave and, by extention, Laserbeak in the list but that was his personal relationship so he kept it to himself.

As if to contribute to the mood, one of the more precariously-tilted buildings collapsed in distance, sending up a cloud of dust around it.

-"Frag…"

-"D'ya think we could still go back to Earth?"

You are welcome to send me your love and adoration.

Thank you for reading!