A request for Greendogg, who wanted a Dreadwing/Arcee story and who came up with the plot outline. I just put a lot of fancy words together.

xx

Dreadwing knew it would rain before he set out on his patrol, the clouds thick and churning with grey damp as his wings cleaved their way through them. Standing on the ground only made the atmosphere press down more on his shoulders, raindrops sliding off his armour and settling in his joints and seams. The dirt turned to mud under his peds, making every step a sludging effort to stay upright. Soon enough the rain was pelting him, streaming off his plating and leaking under his paint, spreading the threat of rust all over his frame. His optics barely broke through the mist, red spotlights struggling to pick out anything more than hazy silhouettes.

A claw of lightening ripped through the sky, and thunder filled the hollows of his audios. He needed shelter- he was no good to the Decepticons as a soaked, fried scrapheap. Looking around, optics constantly blinking themselves clear, he spotted a patch of darkness carved into the foot of a rocky outcrop, dappled with rain dripping from the lip of the entrance. The mud wasn't so deep here, and his peds found purchase on a floor of hard stone as he made for the dark haven ahead.

So dark, the entrance was, he didn't notice the cyan beams staring into him until he was right underneath the runoff of rain. Apart from his wings snapping upwards, Dreadwing froze. The blue armour was more navy in the humid gloom, but the hatred in those optics was unmistakable.

"Well... what are you waiting for?" Arcee spat through shudders, shielding herself with a blade jutting from her servo. "You gonna kill me or not?"

Like her, Dreadwing only had melee weaponry on hand. His sword hung between his shoulders, nestled against his spinal strut, but his digits only twitched rather than reaching for it. There was more cyan in the cavern, a pool of the blue glow appearing underneath the Autobot's body. Her other servo held a hand against her side, stemming the flow of energon still slipping between her digits.

When he breathed in, his intakes filled with the scent of fear. If this femme was in any shape to fight him, she would have attacked by now. In any case, he wasn't on a mission to kill.

"It would not be honorable to offline an injured opponent," Dreadwing said in his exhale. It would gain him back all the favour he lost with Lord Megatron, he knew, but that wouldn't be worth the shame. A mech was only as good as the opponents he fought in fair battle.

Her optics wavered, an eyeridge falling before her armed servo followed suit. "Guess it's my lucky day, then." She sighed, helm dropping as she pressed another hand against her bleeding plates. A flash of lightening illuminated the cave only briefly, giving Dreadwing a glimpse of scratched paint and broken metal.

"How did you get these wounds?" he asked, taking his own seat with his back against the other wall. His wings protested against the tight squeeze, but he folded them as much as his cables would allow. The femme's own winglets had a processor of their own, wiggling and twitching against the rock surrounding them both.
"Insecticon... ambushed me," she eventually said. Each word came out in a heavy vent as her vocaliser struggled against static. "Took a bite out of me before I shot it down."

Dreadwing watched her shift position, angling herself to the right to disperse energon flow away from the wound. "May I see?" he asked, gesturing a claw towards the trickle of blue staining her protoform. She stared at him through slitted optics, studying every minute movement, before finally pulling her sticky digits away.

Though the dimness and amount of energon made details blurry, Dreadwing couldn't see any exposed wires or structure supports through the wide gash. A surface wound- prone to heavy leaking of fuel and possible rust infection if not closed and sterilised, but nothing a competant medic couldn't deal with.
"It does not look fatal-"

"I know that," she snapped, glueing her hands back in place over the cut and closing her optics over. "I have basic field medic training, at least."

Dreadwing huffed through his vents but said nothing else to aggravate. Injured or not, he didn't like the look of the blade she had on her. His audios tuned to the pounding of rain outside battering and flooding the earth, punctuated with the drumbeats of thunder and snare-flashes of lightening. The natural orchestra lulled his processor, drowning it in sound.

"What brings a Seeker out in the middle of a storm?"

When Arcee's voice eventually interrupted it, he was caught off guard and almost chipped his wing off a stone as they both flared out. Under the cover of darkness, the femme smirked at his shock. Even her optics seemed to sparkle with mischief under a film of pain.
"Lord Megatron is insistent of regular ground patrols, regardless of conditions," Dreadwing explained once he recovered, shrinking his wings back down. Still keeping her smirk plastered on, Arcee tilted her helm to one side.

"Sounds like your Lord cares more about logistics than his own soldiers," she said quietly, immedietely drawing Dreadwing's glare onto her.

"Mind your glossa, femme," the mech warned. Steam started to billow from his frame as the heat of his systems made the moisture on his plating evaporate. Soon the cavern was covered with a thin veil of fog. "I... I have a fondess for Earth's storms, if you must know," he continued tentatively, if only to distract the femme from taking advantage of the mist. A wound wouldn't stop her from sneaking a sword slash through one of his wings if he couldn't see it coming.

Arcee only blinked slowly at him, helm still tilted. "Is that so?"

"Yes. Though I cannot fly through them, they... bring me peace. The rain cleanses the air." Even before the war, Cybertron's atmosphere was often too full of industrial fumes and methane clouds to enjoy soaring through. Cities like Iacon and Vos were free of the pollution, but they weren't places Dreadwing had the privilege of visiting before the Decepticons claimed him. Other than Autobots it seemed, no-one else had any appreciation for the small mercies of this dirt planet.

Arcee seemed to understand at least, from the twitch the firm line of her mouth gave at him. "Well, today's your lucky day as well, cause it looks like this one will last a few hours at least."

Dreadwing hummed through his engine, making to turn back to the rainscape outside when a sound caught him unawares. The femme was muffling snorts into one of her hands, with no mind to the energon staining her digits. One of his eyeridges quirked.

"What are you laughing at?" Dreadwing asked. Arcee had to calm herself before her vocaliser would allow her to speak.

"The one day I get stuck with a Decepticon is also the one day I forget to bring my gamepad," she replied, still holding back snorts.

His eyeridge remained up. "Are you sure you're not just delusional from fuel loss?" he asked.

A one shoulder shrug answered him. "Probably that as well."

"Then don't speak," he said. "Conserve the energon you have left."

She might have flashed him a petulant look at the undercurrent of "and stop distracting me" in his tone while his back was turned, but at least it worked. Dreadwing's chronometer counted three hours until the storm folded itself away from the sky, and the femme hadn't spoken again for any of them.

As he stretched out the coiled stiffness in his joints, a glance over his shoulder let him know she was in a semi-stasis mode, and the bleeding had eventually stopped. He was still cautious in approaching her, even with her dormant EM field and shuttered optics. Lifting her servo from her side, he saw a hard crust of energon around her wound that blocked any more leakage. Then there was the button on the side of her comm unit, just above her neck. On scout frames, it would be a distress call wired to the comm of a medic. Her spark signal was no doubt being tracked, yet... she'd still perish if she wasn't found.

He flexed his digits before pushing the distress call, and stepping out into the dripping remains of the afternoon. Megatron would be expecting him back by now.