#alive?

He had never played dead before.

He had been legitimately dead. Sometimes for hours. Dampening the earth with his own blood. His heart silent and still inside his chest.

He had never been one for the element of surprise, preferring instead of jump up as soon as the feeling seeped back into his fingertips and his consciousness danced back over the line between the living and the dead.

The shock and fear reflected back at him in the eyes of his enemy would never cease to satisfy him in ways no other mortal act could.

Her words were the first thing he heard as his senses were reactivated. Soft and familiar. The light of life leading him back from the shadows of non existence.

He would try it her way.

Play dead until one of the assholes crept closer to make certain that he was. When a cold hand reached up to grab the forearm of the man brave enough to check for a pulse, it would be a different kind of reaction. Another brand of fear. An alternative degree of shock.

17. Day and night

Cybertronians don’t really have circadian rhythms the way we think about them -- their roomba hindbrains developed before Cybertron had settled into orbit around a star, and even then Cybertron’s rotational periods are not constant -- and traditionally more stuff got done during the dark period of the rotation becuse that is, just... more familiar to them developmentally. Fortunately, post-war so many Cybertronians were used to a yay-30 hour working cycle after being on the 24-hour Earth for so long that the yay-60 hour Cybertronian day cycle could easily be split into daylight and night time, and then have those two halves be basically an entire days worth of stuff and activity before resetting.