Oh Heyy

"Great," he grumbled, scowling. Keeping his shot lined up, his finger tapped restless, but weightless against the trigger as things he didn't want to think too closely about swirled in the back of his brain module. "Hey, brat," he grunted, volume pitched low. "You hear me?"

On the little bot's small back, barely bigger than the size of Deadlock's hand, tiny door wings quivered in reaction. They twitched again, the joints obviously clogged and painful. Probably every little joint was filled with the system-caking dust of the city's destruction, hurting. Deadlock growled and slapped his blaster back into its thigh holster before kneeling beside the hole, ignoring the jump of his own spark.

He reached down, his hand hovering above the shivering plating over that little back, not quite willing to touch. The dust that was once Praxus lay so thick over the sparkling's armor Deadlock couldn't decipher the color of it. No spilled energon was evident, at least, not even mixing with the dust into a sticky slurry. The smallest whimper drifted up to his audials. Deadlock narrowed his optics and tilted his helm a little, one audial toward the hole and its occupant.

"That's not an answer," he said, gruff and hoping the sparkling didn't start crying and bring the closest Autobot running in their direction—at top speed, even. He tapped at the back of the little helm. "C'mon, you gotta give me something more than that."

Then the sparkling slowly moved, lifting its helm and turning a round little face toward Deadlock. Pale blue optics, dimming at the edges—not a good sign—stared at him, wide and screaming of fear, of exhaustion beyond what a sparkling should know. As those young optics locked on him, the little mouth began to wibble and cleanser pooled in the faded corners of the optical lenses. Deadlock's spark sank into his fuel tank.

The sparkling reached up to him with tiny arms. They were still round with thick pads of sentio metallico not yet stretched into adulthood. Those little door wings, barely bigger than nubs, perked and flicked with pained entreaty, matched by grasping little fingers. Dependent on his choice in that single moment, Deadlock realized his life was about to change forever. A tension he hadn't felt in vorns materialized out of somewhere he couldn't name and sat low in his belly beside his spark.

Little fingers made more grabby motions and cleanser spilled down newling soft cheeks.