The Invictus - Chapter XI

[thecrazyalaskan]

Chapter Eleven

“Grandfather, why is the orphanage so far away?” Prowl whined, stumbling over the rocky terrain. “And why is it so close to the mines?”

“Some of the older orphans work in the mines, Prowl,” Positron explained, picking his way over the ground. “The owner of the mine let the administrators build their orphanage there.”

‘”’Cos he wanted the younglings to work for him,” Prowl grumbled.

“Prowl, hush,” Positron corrected, gentle but stern. “I will not tolerate a bad attitude today.”

“I’m sorry, Grandfather,” Prowl apologized.

“You are forgiven,” Positron replied. “Now do you remember what I said about going to the orphanage?”

“To not say anything mean and to be polite to the younglings ‘cos they’re younglings like me,” Prowl recited.

“Very good,” Positron praised. He paused outside a stone wall and iron gate. “This is the orphanage, Grandson.”

Prowl looked up. He was expecting something… well, something a frag of a lot bigger, first off. The building was made of rusty red stones, one story and narrow, not very big. A few dirty windows dotted the walls, and a worn door was at the front of the building. The yard was dusty and dotted with younglings of varying age and sizes. “How come it’s so tiny, Grandfather?” Prowl asked.

“This is all that the administrators could afford to build, Grandson,” Positron explained, laying his hand on the gate and pushing it open.

The gate groaned open with a loud creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeak that could have been heard from there to the farthest reaches of Cybertronian space. The sound made the younglings in the yard, about a dozen of them, lift their heads. Prowl felt them all staring at him and he and Grandfather stepped through the gate and closed it again; he stared at his pedes, partly out of politeness, but mostly out of awkwardness.

Positron squeezed his hand reassuringly, and started to lead him through the yard. Prowl continued to watch the ground under his pedes, not wanting to look up. He was starting to regret asking Grandfather to bring him here.

Positron got him to the door in one piece, and opened it for Prowl. The dark youngling edged into the room and waited for his grandfather. In inside of the orphanage was as abysmal as the outside—the lighting was dim and everything within eyesight was dingy and subpar. There was one main room, with a long central corridor stretching along the length of the building, peppered with doors to the bedrooms. A small dining-commons room was to the right, with a tiny door leading to presumably the kitchen beyond that. A washroom was on the other side of the main entry, with another room adjacent to it. A cheap sign hanging on this second door read simply Office.

It was through this second door that Positron led Prowl. The office was cramped and dingy, also poorly lit. Storage units flanked all the walls, and in the middle was a desk in chaotic disarray, with two rickety chairs on one side and an office chair on the other. Pacing the floor behind the desk was one of the administrators, a portly middle-aged mech. A fat incense stick hung out of the corner of his mouth, and he appeared to be speaking in a rougher Cybertronian dialect into a commlink. Judging by the way Positron covered Prowl’s audios, the words were not polite ones.

“Why’s he have an incense stick in his mouth, Grandfather?” Prowl asked softly.

“Some mechs find it enjoyable to take in the fumes,” Positron explained gently. “You are to never do such a thing, do you understand?”

“I understand, Grandfather,” Prowl replied.

Positron patted Prowl’s shoulder in approval as the administrator severed his commlink, swearing callously before finally noticing Positron and Prowl. He pointed a writing stylus at Prowl, who recoiled as if it were a weapon. “Dropping off?” the admin grunted around his incense.

Prowl squeaked in fear. Dropping off? Did Grandfather plan to leave him here, and the visit was just a clever ruse? He couldn’t live here! He’d go offline first!

Positron laid his hands on Prowl’s shoulders in a passive-aggressive show of protection. “No—just visiting,” he answered calmly.

The admin grunted in reply. “Just don’t slag with anything,” he said hardly before turning to a business ledger, effectively ending the conversation.

Positron and Prowl bowed slightly before turning and leaving the room. Prowl got out first, cycling deep breaths of clean, smoked-incense free air. “Simply charming fellow,” Positron deadpanned as he shut the door.

“What do we do now, Grandfather?” Prowl asked.

“You may go explore, Grandson,” Positron replied, sitting cautiously on a rickety bench. “I’m tired from the walk. I’ll stay here and rest my legs. You go look around—perhaps talk to some of the younglings.”

“Okay…” Prowl said slowly, looking down the corridor.

“Just do not disturb any of their things—we are guests in their home,” Positron instructed.

“Yes, Grandfather,” Prowl called over his shoulder as he walked down the corridor. A few of the doors were shut, but a great many were open. He ducked into one such open room and closed the door, leaving it slightly ajar as he looked around. The bedroom was sparse, with off-white walls and a small dingy window. He walked the length of the room—thirty paces long and twenty wide. A bed, sitting against the middle of the wall farthest from him and covered with cheap blankets, was poorly made and bowed deep in the middle, indicating the stellar cycles of wear and use.

Prowl didn’t trust himself to sit on it, and turned to look at the rest of the room. Dust clouded around his pedes as he walked. Apparently the room’s owner wasn’t much of a house keeper. Prowl peeked in the closet. Three battered travel valises sat on closet’s the floor. Did three younglings share the room? Prowl could fathom the though, especially since the bed was so small. He closed the closet door and looked around the room. He looked at the things collected on the windowsill—an icon of Primus and pieces of trinkets and costume adornments that meant nothing to anyone but their owners. The occupants’ worldly possessions.

Shaking his head at the idea of such… abject poverty, Prowl slipped out of the room, leaving every as he’d found it, per Grandfather’s instructions. He peeked in a few other rooms—all were set up the same way, and housed more than one youngling. A few rooms had shaky desks with school pads on them. All of the rooms were very dismal and depressing.

He gave up looking in the bedrooms and wandered into the dining-commons room. Long institutional tables and low benches ran the length of the room. A chalkboard hung on one wall, indicating an in-house education system. In an open corner of the room was a chest of toys.

Curiosity piqued, Prowl walked over and opened the chest. The contents were just as depressing as the rest of the place—a few cheap dolls, half a set of toy soldiers, a hollow ball made from aluminum and most of a set of building blocks. A pile of datapads were stacked on a shelf nearby. He picked one up and powered it up. As near as he could tell, through a cracked screen and glitchy readout, it was a book of myths. Turning it off and laying it aside, he grabbed a handful of the blocks and turned them over in his hands. They were simple, roughly hewn stone, with images, numbers and Cybertronian characters painted on them with soot and cheap energon. The characters on the blocks’ faces spelled the word for sad. “This whole place is really sad,” Prowl mumbled, dropping the blocks back in the chest and picking up the ball. Upon closer inspection, he noted that it had been patched and repaired multiple times.

“Hello,” a soft voice behind him cut in.

Prowl dropped the ball with a yelp and spun around, pressing himself back into the toy chest. He was faceplate to faceplate with another youngling, a femme roughly his age.

He thought she was about his age—if her height and skinny frame were all he was going on, she looked about six. Her chassis was probably blue under the dirt and dust of the yard outside. Her pedes turned in at the ankles and she gnawed on the fingers of her right hand; the other hand dangled almost uselessly at her side. Prowl almost thought that her left arm was dead from the hunched shoulder down until he saw her fingers twitch. She stared captivated by his presence. Her eyes were hollow and vacant—who knew what she’d seen before she got here?—but alert. For all that, though… something behind them betrayed some kind of mental glitch. He pressed back into the chest again. He was sure there was pile of slag behind him—she’d certainly scared it out of him.

“Hello,” she said again, around her fingers. Her voice was barely louder than a whisper.

“H… hello,” Prowl stammered.

“Who are you?” she asked, taking a step closer.

Prowl tried not to scream for Grandfather yet. “I’m Prowl,” he said slowly. “Who are you?”

The question went unanswered: “Are you coming to live here now?”

The words slag no came to mind, but Prowl bit them back—he was supposed to be polite, and Grandfather would have his aft if he found Prowl didn’t follow that standing order. “N-no, I’m just visiting,” he answered.

“I live here,” the femme went on, taking another step closer. Prowl could smell her now; she hadn’t seen a washrack in a while, and the smell made him slightly ill. “My mama and daed died.”

“Oh… I’m sorry,” Prowl replied softly. “What about your grandfather and grandmother?”

“They’re bastards,” she hissed. Prowl pressed back into toy chest—she did have a mental glitch, if her mood could shift like mercury in a cooking pan!

“Bastards,” she hissed again, hardly aware of his presence. “Treat me like slag all the time—hitting me on the head…” She went on, mumbling to herself.

“That would explain a lot,” Prowl grumbled, still pressed into the toy chest.

Though the words were meant only for him, the femme heard them and looked over at him. Prowl felt a terrified scream bubbling up in the back of his throat. A scream or his breakfast—they felt about the same. She took a step closer, and then another… and another. Prowl could make out every scratch and ding in her chassis now.

He turned his head and opened his mouth to scream when he felt the femme’s hand come down on his helm. Her touch was very light; Prowl could have sworn on his grandmother’s grave that he could feel every grain of dirt on her hand scratching at his helm. He squirmed and swallowed his scream. “You’re so pretty,” she murmured as she ran her fingertips over his helm.

“Ahh… thank you?” Prowl answered slowly. Now his chassis was crawling with discomfort.

“You’re so pretty… You’re so clean,” she mumbled, practically using the light gleam in his chassis as a mirror. “How do you get so clean like that?”

“I… I wash,” he replied.

“You’re lots bigger than me,” she added, looking at his waist and abdominals. “What kinda stuff do you eat?”

“I… I eat energon and low grade,” Prowl said slowly. Something told him she wasn’t implying he was too large for his height. “I eat the same kind of stuff you do… Right? Y-you eat energon, right?”

“Sometimes,” she mumbled. “Sometimes we don’t get to eat because there’s no credits to get it.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Prowl offered. “My grandfather and I, sometimes we don’t have enough credits either.”

The femme fingered the gold crests above his visor, mumbling still. The longer she touched him, the more ill-at-ease he felt. “You’re so pretty,” she mumbled, a little clearer. “I like you.”

“I… I like you, too.” He felt slightly guilty about the lie, especially since he was lying to a femme a few neural pathways shy of a full processor, but he was desperate to end the conversation and get the slag out of dodge, and the lie felt very necessary.

She kept pressing into his space aura and touching his helm, his cheeks, fingering the edge of his visor. Prowl squirmed under her touches, but nothing he did seemed to illustrate his displeasure to her. Half the time she seemed truly deaf to his words—and awkward whimpers. “Wh… what are you doing?” he asked finally.

She didn’t answer but let her fingers drift downward. He felt her clumsy fingers probing wires in his neck, and he squirmed again. Her touch continued to lower over his shoulder. She seemed to be admiring the smooth cleanliness of his chassis. Prowl continued to writhe.

Her hands reached his chestplating, and she paused, considering the black and gold armor. Prowl watched her face. Her expression held its vacant fascination. What exactly she was seeing on his chesthull, because the look in her eyes indicated that it wasn’t the armor, was totally unclear. Slowly, her fingers traced the edges before finding the invisible seam in the center of the plating. She traced it, painfully slowly, with the tip of her finger. Her touch left a little trail of fire in his chestplating, and he squirmed as his spark started to pulse, hard and fast.

She paused again, just above his crest, and Prowl jerked away, backing up with his hands held out in front of him to put as much distance between himself and the femme. She didn’t follow; slag, she didn’t even move. She gnawed on her fingers again, watching him dully. She didn’t follow or see to process when he ran out of the room with a strangled half yelp.

Comments

Chapter Eleven

[lunaeshark.livejournal.com]

Creepy indeed... Poor Prowl. Not what he was expecting, was it?

Great chapter, though I feel like crying for the orphans. :(

Re: Chapter Eleven

[thecrazyalaskan.livejournal.com]

Yeah. 0_o I'm an absolute pansy and I HATE horror movies, but the whole time I wrote the last bit of the chapter, my brain kept going, "Horror movie... horror movie... crap that gives you nightmares if you even look at the DVD cover."

Thank you. I felt so bad for them. They suffer too, apparently. *hugs all the orphans*