The Day We Hailed The Heavens

Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Confide in Me

The next day found Alexis on the roof of the base, staring absent-mindedly out over the stretch of grass to the cliffside that the base was perched on the edge of. Optimus had told her the news the night before, and now she was determining to treasure her last morning in California.

The morning sunshine glowed overhead as she sat with her slender legs dangling over the side and her chin resting on one hand, scanning the slowly brightening heavens as the sun rose above her. The sky was already bleeding from a pale grey to bright, dazzling blue, and the remnants of dew lingering on the grass sparkled with every colour of the spectrum as the light caught the water.

A small sigh escaped her and she closed her eyes for a moment when there was a tiny stinging from her skin where the necklace lay.

The gem had grown colder and heavier since her nightmare, and the base of her neck had taken to aching constantly; she could rarely find a comfortable position to sit or sleep in because of it, and it frequently became stiff, momentarily paralysing her head. She was exhausted by carrying it, but she had long since given up on trying to remove it - if fate had cast her in this role, then she knew that she had no choice but to accept its decision. Her future was out of her hands now.

She opened one eye to peer up at the pale yellow sunshine of the morning.

Tranquillity had been her home since she had been born. She had only left once, when she and her parents had gone to attend a wedding in Nebraska, but other than that she had always been in this place. Even though her father had been constantly travelling with the Air Force, he had insisted that they stay in one place to ensure a secure family environment, and so that Alexis had an uninterrupted education.

Well, she thought with a grim smile, that theory went out of the window when the Autobots came along.She would miss the blazing sunshine of California. She would miss the places that she knew like the back of her hand: the Autobot base, her home away from home; the lake where the kids hung out; the spring beyond the trees where she and Starscream went for their trysts.

And... she would miss her own home.

As she was with the Autobots so much, she rarely considered her true home and her family. It was something that she was internally guilty about; she had abandoned her mother for the past three years, only coming home now and again to show her face for a few hours before she left again, mainly by Hummer or jet.

But despite the fact that she had neglected it, she would miss the little house in Tranquillity. She would miss the smell of cookies in the kitchen... the photographs of her father that lined the walls in the front room... her once-organised bedroom that had disintegrated into disarray when all sense of normalcy and order in her life had disappeared.

"Hey, Alexis."

The pasty young woman glanced up to see Mikaela stepping up from the ladder that led from the ground to the roof. "Hey," she greeted softly, shifting over a little so that the brunette could sit down next to her. "You're up early."

Mikaela shrugged casually, brushing dust from her jeans before she came and seated herself at Alexis's side. "It's ten already," she pointed out, indicating her wristwatch to prove her point." How long have you been out here for?" she added concernedly.

"Couple of hours?" Alexis guessed. "I couldn't sleep."

"Oh," Mikaela murmured, drawing her knees up to her chin and embracing them tightly as she scanned the sky.

A thoughtful silence fell between the two young women. It was a silence that spoke a thousand words, and yet it was edged with tension - tension that Mikaela was radiating like warmth from the sunshine. There were so many things that she longed to ask her friend, but she could not think of how to word them. How to ask her what Optimus had meant when he spoke of her nightmares, and what her necklace's intentions truly were.