The Day We Hailed The Heavens

Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

There Was a Time

Seraphim caught up to Jade at the doorway to the human quarters, extending a long metallic arm and grasping her friend's to prevent her from going any further. "Jade, stop," she pleaded softly, and kept a firm grip around her wrist when she half-heartedly tried to pull away from the femme. "Come on, girl - it wasn't your fault -"

"Yes, it was!" Jade insisted vehemently, turning to face her. Seraphim blinked in surprise when she saw tears leaking from her brown eyes. "If I'd just kept my big mouth shut..." She heaved a sob, one hand covering her mouth. "Oh, Sera, didn't you see the look Starscream gave me?"

"Starscream needs his sorry aft welded to a time bomb," Seraphim growled, narrowing her optics at the doorway that led to the communications room.

However, her expression softened when Jade continued to cry, her body trembling with her quiet sobs. She took a step forward and wrapped her arms around the small human, and Jade leant against her tearfully. Much as she found humans odd sometimes, Jade and Carlos were her best friends - closer to her even than Arcee or the other Cybertronians - and she hated to see the sweet young woman so upset.

"N-now what'll we do?" Jade's muffled voice came from somewhere near Seraphim's waist. "Rose knows - and now Mikaela will be mad at me, because n-now Rose won't go anywhere near them and she was trying t-to get her with Ratchet... everyone's going to hate me!"

The femme raised an optic ridge and held Jade at arm's length by the shoulders. "Jade, you may be my best friend - but you do come out with a lot of slag sometimes," she said sternly, and Jade managed a weepy hiccough of laughter. "Come on, no one will hate you. How could anyone hate you? You're the kindest person in this base."

Jade snuffled miserably, although a minuscule smile had appeared on her lips. "Maybe, but I'm crap at keeping secrets."

"Oh, shut up," Seraphim scolded, reaching out a large hand and ruffling her friend's long hair affectionately. "Everyone has their flaws, Jadie. You can't keep a secret too well, but you possess many better qualities than many of the rest of us do. Now, I'm going to run and get Skyfire and we're all going to go for a ride, okay?"

The Californian summer day certainly called for a ride in Skyfire's aerodynamic bomber form, and Jade nodded, formulating a shaky smile and glancing out of the warehouse window at the blazing sunshine and brilliantly blue sky above. If there was one thing in the world that she could do with right now, it was a chance to escape from the base and the resentful looks of Starscream and Alexis - escape to the sky with her lover and her best friend.

Seraphim winked her before she transformed into the gleaming Vespa scooter and shot off down the corridor; apparently, Skyfire's laboratory was too great a distance across the base to just walk.

Then again, Seraphim was a total speed junkie.

Sighing and swallowing the last of her sobs, Jade leant against the wall and looked at the floor.

She had been more than a little foolish. True, she and Skyfire had not sat down together and planned their make-out session - it had just happened spontaneously, as such sessions tended to do - but she supposed that they should have been a little more careful, given the fact that Rose was around the base, blissfully unaware of the relationships that two of the humans shared with the Cybertronians. She had panicked when Rose had happened across them - Skyfire's holoform was human-like, but it was obviously not totally human.

It had been embarrassing enough to be caught kissing her boyfriend by a newcomer, but she had seen the suspicion in Rose's eyes immediately. She was a sharp-minded girl, and she was not the type to be fooled by desperate lies and cover-ups. And Jade's panic had not helped her ability to lie, either - she hated dishonesty anyway, but what option had she had but to try?