the words to say to you

Poems on Earth were different than poems on Cybertron.

Wedge had never been a fan of Cybertronian poetry; it was all epics and ballads, or what were called epics and ballads on Earth because humans had come up with about a hundred other variations, short and long, rhyming and "free-verse," all different kinds of rhyme schemes and focuses on rhythm or just breaking the line in different places to take what might otherwise be flowery prose and mold it into a poem.

Back on Cybertron, the closest thing Wedge had to a favorite poem was fifty-six lines long and pretty short compared to most other poems, about Searchlight searching all throughout a lunar eclipse for a lost medic, and the most enthusiasm she'd ever been able to muster up for it had been "Searchlight in the Darkness is pretty good, I like that one." Other poems could be hundreds of lines long, and were about other Heroes of Cybertron; racers or cube players; soldiers or officers or units or specific battles during the war; or the Primes themselves. They were mostly for historians and sports fans, and she just... wasn't interested.

Here on Earth, though, she had a datapad with a big chunk of memory devoted to poems she'd found and liked enough to save and revisit. She never would have expected it, but there it was. Sometimes she didn't even save whole poems, just bits and pieces. She had haiku by Bashō and Issa and Soseki, "Ask Me" by William Stafford with the lines Some time when the river is ice ask me / mistakes I have made. Ask me whether / what I have done is my life. highlighted, "The Sciences Sing a Lullaby" by Albert Goldbarth with nothing highlighted at all. She had I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night written alone and uncommented on. She had poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who had a lot of names for a single human and whose poems had a clear structure and rhyme scheme that she liked, and by e.e. cummings, who apparently didn't capitalize his name and whose poems did weird things with spacing and punctuation and run-on nonsense sentences that she also liked. She had "I died for Beauty, but was scarce" by Emily Dickinson from when Wes had to memorize a poem ten lines or longer for class and she'd wound up almost able to recite it herself by the end of it. She was pretty sure she even had song lyrics in there that she'd never heard the songs to; she definitely had a few she knew she had, thanks to Whirl's karaoke nights.

More than anything else, though, she had poems about nature and animals, and poems about other things that used nature and animals as symbolism. She was just drawn to it. And, secretly, that was what she was trying to write.

She didn't know why she was keeping it a secret, exactly. Her friends were good people, and none of them made fun of each other for the things they were into or their differences in approaching situations. But this felt a little different from Whirl and Hoist's Earth museum, Whirl's singing, Hoist's meditation, Medix's love of organizing and soap operas and cat videos... It felt a lot different from Hot Shot's love of Cube. This wasn't just something Wedge wasn't made for and something different from anything on Cybertron. Poems were emotional, and the ones she liked she felt like the poet had opened themself up and shown some deep part of themself. Poems were supposed to be about something that meant a lot to you, from what she could tell. Something you loved or feared or needed to say.

"Maybe I just don't need to say anything," she muttered to herself, after a dozen-or-so attempts to write a poem about the beach came out feeling flat and clumsy. She hadn't felt this graceless since she'd tried to go against Hot Shot at Cube, and while she tried to tell herself she'd won that one, it didn't help much.

"Are you having trouble with something?" Boulder's calm, pleasant voice asked, and Wedge jumped, trying to hide the datapad at first before realizing that just made it way more obvious she was embarrassed and un-hiding it.

"Professor Boulder! Um... No? I mean, a little. But it's nothing important..."

Boulder looked curious, but didn't so much as crane their head to try to see the datapad. "You don't have to share if you don't want to. But I'd be happy to help."

...Maybe Boulder would be the best person to open up to. They was a teacher, so they might have some ideas; they loved nature and was the one who'd taught Hoist to meditate, so they was in touch with emotion and might understand why this was important to Wedge and how to actually talk about nature. Or how to write about it. She scratched at her neck, abashed.

"I'm... trying to write a poem. About the beach."

"And you're not happy with the results?"

"No," Wedge admitted, and sighed, frustrated. "It's not coming out right. And I've read a lot of poetry -- I mean a lot -- and it makes sense while I'm reading it but-- I just can't sound like that."

"There's definitely a difference between reading and writing," Boulder said. "Try not to be hard on yourself. It won't be perfect at first."

"I don't need it to be perfect," she argued. "I just want it to be... kind of good? And it's really not. Believe me." She really didn't want to show her failed attempts to Boulder, but luckily the professor didn't ask her to. They just hummed thoughtfully, a sound that Wedge found reassuring despite herself.

"Why about the beach, specifically?" Boulder asked.

"I like poems about nature. A lot. And-- poems are supposed to be about something important to you. The beach and the ocean mean a lot to me, so that's what I should write about, right?"

"I see what you mean," Boulder said meditatively. "But you may be putting too much pressure on yourself. Poems about nature mean a lot to you, and the beach is important to you, and you want to write about something important to you. Are you thinking of this as an important poem?"

"...Isn't it supposed to be?" Wedge was a bit baffled; a poem should be important at least to the person writing it, shouldn't it? She figured that might be why she bounced off a lot of poems.

"Ah." Boulder looked knowing. "It's all right, Wedge. You've just put too much pressure on yourself. You're having a hard time making something you're proud of because you feel like it's important to get it right. But you're new to this, and you're going to need to practice."

"How?"

"Humans do something called freewriting. It's when you sit down and just let yourself write anything that comes to mind. It might not even be a poem. But writing about what you think and how you feel can get you used to getting words down, and that will help your writing."

A thought occurred, and Wedge was interested. "Have you ever written anything?"

"Once or twice."

She kind of wanted to ask to see it, but fair was fair; she appreciated that Boulder hadn't asked to look at what she'd been trying to write. "Okay, so just... Think about the beach and write whatever comes to mind?"

"It doesn't have to be about the beach. You might feel less pressure if you wait on that," Boulder suggested. "Just write anything. And keep reading poetry," they added. "The more you read and write, the more you'll figure out what you like, and your own style."

'Freewriting' was easier said than done. Part of it, Wedge was sure, was that she was used to things that were measurable. Pass or fail grades, right or wrong answers, situations the team either succeeded or failed at. Sure, there were gradients in there, passing grades that weren't great, an answer that wasn't right but was on the right track, a mission where they could only do so much. But there were still concrete results. Writing, as it turned out, was nothing but nebulous, and she was in way over her head with things like that.

Seagulls, wings stretched out like jets, she tried, automatically going for poetry and the beach again, and swiftly discarded it.

Being part of a team is better than I imagined. It's no longer about being good enough. We have each others' backs, she also discarded.

This feels really stupid and I'm no good with words. I feel like I should just give up. What if I can't get better at it? How will I know if I'm getting better?

She paused. That was no better, honestly, but it felt a little better. At least getting it out there was kind of freeing, even if no one was ever going to see it. Maybe even because of that.

It's almost easier for me to write about being frustrated and feeling bad. That's kind of sad, actually. Maybe I should keep going, but it feels like this is going to take a lot of effort, too. If I really want to improve. I'm not sure I have time to dedicate to this with classes and missions and the rescue alarm going off

She dropped the datapad on her desk and ran for the launch tubes. And if she'd gotten there last she would legitimately have dropped the whole idea of writing, but all of them made it at just about the same time, with Hot Shot and Hoist's feet hitting the ground just a second after hers, so that was all right.

She didn't spend all her free time trying to write, obviously. Whenever the group got together to watch movies, or play games, or do pretty much anything else, she had no inclination to brush them off. She'd toss the lobbing ball or kick the soccer ball around with Hot Shot, hang out with Medix, go out to the beach on her own to pick up trash and comb for seaglass and bits of fossil and bone. But she was on her datapad at least a few minutes every day, usually either before her nightly recharge cycle or right after defragmenting. And Professor Boulder had a point... The less she tried to make the words pretty, the less she tried to stick to a specific subject, the easier they came out.

That wasn't actually making poetry any easier, though. Every time she tried to turn things back in that direction, she felt that fumbling uncertainty rise back up in her, the words tripping over themselves. It was better than before, but still not any good.

Snow on the ground and in the air, / After a mission, we five share... There was something clumsy and childish to it that she just didn't feel when reading others' poems. Not every line needed to rhyme; maybe that was the problem?

"Rookie mistake," she muttered, and felt a little better to be able to tell herself that, to spot what she hoped was the problem.

The next night, after one of their rare days off, she tried longer lines, alternating rhymes. Thinking about her team this time, what they all liked, shying away from nature for the moment but still sticking to something close to her spark; she couldn't bring herself not to. The things that light them up inside are different as can be, / but still reveal themselves in brighter eyes and brighter voice, / like their sparks can't help shining through ?? But she got hung up there, stumped on what to rhyme with 'be' and then, when she tried to just move onto the next line and maybe fix that one up later, having even less idea of what to rhyme with 'voice'.

"This is impossible," she groaned, pushing the datapad away from herself and sitting down on the edge of her bed, rubbing her forehead. "Okay. Maybe I can try starting off not rhyming. Free verse sounds kind of like freewriting, so maybe it's easier?"

The next morning, before she headed to class, she had a few extra minutes and spent it typing:

3-simplex, dodecahedron
Liege Maximo's benediction, Micronus in their Core
almost round
like a spark, or a star
or home

She stopped there, dissatisfied. That was... maybe better, technically, but it didn't feel right either. Her spark really wasn't in this one, and she knew she'd had it right when she'd thought it needed to be important to her for her to feel good about her own poetry. That felt more like how a poem was 'supposed' to go, but there was no real emotion in it, or at least not deep emotion. She wasn't particularly homesick. She liked Earth, and more than that she liked the Academy, and even more than that she liked her team...

She headed out, a bit too late to grab a cube before class, making a note to refuel after.

There was a late-night rescue that night, not far from the Academy, and while they were all pretty worn out they didn't make any big mistakes during it. Spirits were high as they decided to drive back, instead of taking a bridge, and Wedge basked in the banter between them all and the excitement of a job well done. Maybe she'd been on the right track trying to write about all of them...

"Hel-loo?" Hot Shot's voice broke through her thoughts. "Wedge? You driving on autopilot, buddy?"

"Huh?" Wedge asked, startled. "Oh, sorry. Guess I must be tired." Now she had a better idea of why she didn't want to share this hobby of hers; she wanted to keep it to herself until she was at least a little better at it, anyway.

"That was rather exhausting," Medix agreed. "And satisfying."

"And exciting!" Whirl added.

"Which is also exhausting," Medix pointed out.

"Yeah," Hoist said, "I usually work on a few things before sleeping, but I'm beat."

"So nobody's gonna join me for a game?" Hot Shot audibly drooped, if not visibly. "Aw, man. That mission has me all amped up."

"I'll help you work out some energy, Hot Shot!" Whirl was as enthusiastic as ever, and Wedge honestly didn't know how she did it, because she really was tired now that she was thinking about it.

When she actually got to her room, though, she sat down on her bed but then reached over to grab her datapad. The mission had been exciting, and she was a little energetic still, if worn out, and something about the drive back had grabbed onto her. She wasn't even sure what it was yet.

"Guess that's what freewriting's good for," she said under her breath, scanning her last attempt at a poem dissatisfied before scrolling down.

This is home, not Cybertron. Wherever my team is. The stars aren't a bad subject, but my friends might be even better? I should try again. What about the drive got me wanting to write? It was a job well done. Being around people I love. We don't usually drive so late, so maybe seeing the world in a new way?

The constellations don't lead home.

She hesitated, then, suddenly inspired, went down a few more lines and started again.

Stars path the way home.
I don't even need to look at the sky to see them
and the way they light up
the world, the road,
your bright paint as we drive.
Your headlights light up the road like stars,
your bright voice lighting up
everything that sparks in me.
Unerringly pointing me to
the only place I need to be.

She stopped, but for the first time, not due to dissatisfaction. There was still a bit of clumsiness there, yes, but it felt better, for the first time it felt halfway decent, and even being short it felt done. She'd actually finished a poem!

And that was only half of what was taking her aback, because she'd finished it -- written a little over half of it, actually -- thinking of Medix.

"You've helped me out with a lot. Why not this, too?" she said to herself. Too bad she couldn't actually show this to Medix, because it still felt rough, unpolished, clumsy like some newborn animal. Maybe no one showed off the first poem they ever wrote-slash-actually-finished. Maybe it was too wobbly and fragile for that.

"Okay, now I'm stuck thinking in metaphors."

It made sense, though. She really cared about Medix, they was maybe her closest friend here, even if she like Hot Shot would consider the entire team her best friends. Medix had also tried to help her out whenever she was feeling down about herself, especially during Halloween. It would be hard to write a short poem addressed to four different people all at once, so Medix kind of stood in for the whole team. Medix did point her home -- it was where her friends were.

She still read poetry, just like Boulder had suggested. She'd lapsed a bit while she was trying to actually successfully write any poem of her own, hadn't been reading as much, but she renewed her habits after that, feeling more secure now in the knowledge that she could actually finish something.

She reread old favorites, saved new poems to her datapad and didn't see a pattern to them at first. It was harder not to notice the pattern in her more successful attempts at poetry.

She managed three that were about nature, and she was pretty happy with them. One about earth -- not Earth -- one about regrowth after a fire, and one about sea glass though not about the beach itself; she was still trying to get better at things, feel a little more confident in her writing, before trying to tackle that project again. She wrote one about Heatwave-the-dog and dogs in general after he and his owner came to visit on one of their days off. She even wrote one about Whirl and Hoist's museum, and their enthusiasm for it.

But out of the dozen short poems she actually managed to finish over those few months, most of her successful attempts, the ones that flowed most easily, were about Medix. There was no denying or ignoring that.

"How are you doing with your writing?" Boulder asked one day, when no one else was around; Wedge was grateful for their quiet voice.

"Better, I think," she said honestly, and hesitated. "Professor, is there a name for when there's one subject that's especially inspiring for you? One that's easier to write about than anything else?"

"Humans call that a 'muse'," Boulder said. "Have you found something like that yourself?"

"I'm not sure yet," Wedge said, fans trying to cool down swiftly-warming internal systems. She excused herself, hopefully before Boulder could notice her embarrassment. Looking up muses didn't explain much itself, just some human mythologies, but there was only so long Wedge could honestly think that Medix was just standing in for the entire team. That was definitely not what was happening anymore, if it ever had been.

It wasn't like she didn't know she found Medix attractive. Of course she did; she had since they'd met! But as they'd simultaneously become more of a team and also gotten to know one another better, that had felt less appropriate, so she'd tried to put it to one side. And they hadn't been particularly close before Medix had confessed to all of them that they'd thought they didn't like the real Medix, and Wedge had gone out of her way after that to try to spend more time with Medix, to make it clear that they was liked. Or, it had been going out of her way the first time, but almost immediately she'd wished she'd done it sooner, because she actually did like Medix a lot, as a person and as a friend...

I watch as you arrange and rearrange
your things, your hands gingerly setting glass
in just-so places on the shelves. It's strange;
I could take this time to prepare for class,
I know you wouldn't mind. Just being here
satisfies both our want for company.
I always offer help, but you see clear
exactly what you want, and don't need me
throwing things off, hands bumping into yours,
in your way. That's fine. I just enjoy the sight
of your precise fingers caught up in their chores
getting your space perfect. Or not quite.
You know you'll just put them back. You know it's true.
Just like I know that my thoughts will return to you.

That was not a friendly sentiment. It wasn't even a sentiment of finding Medix attractive or alluring, which wouldn't have been a surprise because duh. That was her newest poem and she was just about shouting at herself to notice that she kept thinking about Medix, basically.

That was, not to drive the point home too hard, a love poem. Wedge had read love poems, she knew what they looked like! She'd saved several. She'd... saved most of the ones she'd saved over the past few months, in retrospect.

She found Medix beautiful, she liked Medix a whole lot, she loved Medix as well as all the rest of them as a friend, but did she love Medix? It was an uncertain boundary that she hadn't thought about before, and she was finding it hard to recognize now, except apparently in the words that came out of her when she wasn't thinking too hard about it.

And in some of the other poems she'd chosen to save to her datapad, without thinking anything much of it at all. She had written, by itself, the most important set of lines in a poem she'd found, ones that had stuck with her enough that she'd wanted to come back to them more than any of the rest of it, enough that she'd circled them insistently.

& how many times have you loved me without my asking?
how often have i loved a thing because you loved it?
including me

"Scraplets," Wedge said into her hands, covering her face. "Okay. That's fine. Just, nobody can ever see these poems. But why are these so much easier..."

She trailed off, realizing it even as she said it. Part of her had been expecting that she'd eventually be able to open up about this and share some poem she'd written, even if it wasn't her very first one. She really didn't mind opening up to her friends, if she could believe she was any good at it. With the poems about, or to, or just... thinking of Medix, part of her had already known they were something different, something she didn't want to just go showing everyone.

"How do poets ever publish love poems?" she asking himself aloud, staring down at her datapad with new eyes. "That's insane!" She had a new appreciation for the bravery of poets, Primus.

She refocused. She still wasn't finishing about half the poems she started, but she was getting better, she could tell. She wrote a sonnet about being underwater, cycling water through her ventilation system instead of air, the calming sensation of it. She wrote a haiku about Schnoodles, and then another about the yellow-eyed penguins, and then three more about various rescue missions for good measure, because haiku were actually really addictive as it turned out. She wrote a triolet about flying through space, through the dark and past the distant stars. She wrote a rondel about Medix's grin, a cocky expression she rarely got to see but found a renewed appreciation for in memory. She wrote a limerick about Tough Luck Chuck that she did actually mark as maybe being willing to share with the others sometime. She wrote a monorhyme about Wes's determination to earn merit badges, feeling like she was really getting a lot better at rhyming without getting totally stuck or feeling like it read unpracticed and clumsy. She utterly failed at writing a sestina about feeling like she was able to do more than she used to believe she could, which kept trying to turn into another poem about Medix anyway.

She was kind of fed up by that point and tried writing freeverse again, a totally unstructured poem purposefully about Medix that time, about how attractive they was, trying to get it out of her system. She didn't just not finish that poem, but deleted it entirely and outright. She was glad she'd tried writing that one at night, because if she'd done it in the morning she wasn't sure she'd have been able to meet Medix's eyes at all that day.

This was getting all tangled up. She was actually doing pretty well, she thought, and she was proud of that, and in her spark she really did still want to write about nature, and Earth, and her team, and all the important things, and even to be able to share them. But her spark also crackled with feeling for Medix specifically, and she couldn't ignore that. She couldn't share it with anyone else, but... maybe she should share it with Medix.

"This is a terrible idea," she told herself. Then argued with herself, "But, hey, maybe you'll stop writing so many poems about them now that you're thinking about sharing them."

Maybe not. Their second year was about to start, and she'd actually spent a fair amount of their short break reading and writing. More than she had while they'd been having classes, anyway. She still didn't sequester herself away, far from it, but all of them needed some alone time and she took hers in her room, or out in the canyons, or in the woods, or on the beach.

With only a couple days left until classes started back up, she got up early and went down to the beach at dawn, before anyone else was awake, bringing a couple of cubes so she could refuel that morning and a little bit later without having to leave, and two datapads. For the first time, she let herself spend hours down there, and she picked up trash, cleaned up as best she could, and sat down, letting herself just watch the ocean. She'd picked up another piece of sea glass as well, a small one even by human standards, and felt its small smoothness in her palm, thinking. It was close to noon when she started writing, and the sea breeze kept it from being too hot; she'd found an out of the way place where she only had to hide once or twice from humans who wandered really far from the crowd, usually with dogs, and smiled as she watched them pass, and enjoyed the sounds of the beachgoers at a distance.

"I finished it," she said quietly to Boulder when she came back through the bridge.

They smiled at her, so obviously pleased for her that she had to grin back. "Good for you, Wedge!"

"I owe a lot to you for encouraging me, Professor," she said, rubbing the back of her neck sheepishly. "And I'd like you to read it tomorrow. If you're interested! I want to share it with the others first."

"I understand," Boulder assured her. "And I'd be happy to."

Hot Shot was at one of the arcade machines when Wedge entered the common room, and the other three were all sitting on the couch in front of the T.V. She felt a little shaky, off-balance, and it would have been a little too easy to just tell herself he didn't want to interrupt them, so it was a good thing that Whirl noticed her.

She twisted around, then turned down the T.V. and just flat-out got up on her knees on the couch, one arm over the back of it, the other waving. "Wedge!"

"Whoa!" Hot Shot turned away from his game, losing his last life and, to be fair to him, only giving a mild, "--Aw, man!" when he noticed before turning back to Wedge. "Where've you been? I didn't think we were gonna see you at all today!"

"Yeah, you never disappear like that," Hoist said, and Wedge was touched by the concern, and when Medix piped up:

"Are you feeling all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Wedge said, grinning sheepishly. "Sorry, guys. I didn't mean to worry anyone. I've just... been working on something."

Whirl was practically standing on the couch at that point. "Really? What?"

"Um..." Wedge froze. She hadn't thought this through completely, and she was just realizing it then -- how do you share a poem with a group of people? Pass the datapad around so they could all read it quietly? Oh, no, she was actually going to have to read it out loud, wasn't she??

"Yeah, Wedge!" Hot Shot was enthusing. "Spill!"

Hoist was attuned to the specific sort of social discomfort Wedge was going through, luckily. Wedge really appreciated her. "Come on, don't rush her. You know how Wedge gets about the spotlight," she reminded them.

"She liked it at Dig Fest," Hot Shot pointed out, but subsided, heading over to the couch. "C'mon, big guy, sit down, open those vents. It's just us."

Wedge glanced at Medix, then over at Whirl and Hoist as well, trying to make that initial impulse less obvious. "Right," she agreed. "It's just you."

Hot Shot sat on the end of the couch, and Whirl scooted over, making room between herself and Medix for her so she could sit in the middle; Medix also scooched obligingly when they realized what she was doing. Wedge couldn't help smiling, taking a seat. "Thanks, guys."

"Okay," Hot Shot said. "Not rushing you, but--"

"Hot Shot." That came from the other three pretty much simultaneously, and Wedge rolled her eyes, then laughed.

"All right, all right. So... humans write a lot of poetry. Like, a lot."

"Like about their soccer players and rescue teams?" Hot Shot asked.

"No, human poetry's really different!" Whirl said. "It's like songs without the music."

"Didn't you say there's a type of music that's just music without the lyrics?"

"That's instrumentals. Poems are totally different. And..." Whirl realized they'd kind of sidetracked things, and smiled embarrassed. "Sorry for interrupting?"

Wedge couldn't be fonder, honestly. "That's okay. Whirl's right, though. Most human poems are completely different from Cybertronian poems. I really like them, so... I've been trying to write poetry for a while." She pulled out her datapad, and even Medix leaned over automatically as if to take a look as if it had gone from impulse to action with no processing in between.

"Hey!" She held the datapad to her chest, grinning, and they all sat back, looking varying degrees of sheepish.

"Sorry," Hoist said.

"Yes, this is just very unexpected," Medix said. "And exciting!"

"You said it!" Whirl agreed. "Wedge, why didn't you say you liked poetry before now?"

"When I was just reading it, it never really came up," Wedge explained. "And when I started writing it... I wasn't any good at it. I wasn't sure when, or if, I would be. So I just... wrote a little bit every day until I got better."

"Huh," Hot Shot said. "I guess it's like Cube -- practice makes perfect, right?"

"That is basically any skill," Medix informed him.

"And I definitely wouldn't say 'perfect'," Wedge said. "I'm not that good. But I am happy enough with where I am to share something I wrote... If you guys want to hear it."

She was gratified that they looked delighted -- well, mostly. "Wait, hear it? Are you really going to read it to us?!" Whirl asked excitedly.

"That's really cool, Wedge!" Hoist said.

"I'm looking forward to it," said Medix.

"I'm sure it's gonna be great, but uh..." Hot Shot half-winced, half-smiled, looking sheepish, "How long is it, exactly?"

"Oh, we were just going to watch another episode of World's Cutest Animals anyway," Medix said, and Wedge's spark warmed at the realization that they also thought that the poem might be stupidly long and was still happy to listen.

"No, human poems are like their songs, remember?" Whirl said. "It'll probably be six minutes, at most."

"It'll be a lot less than that," Wedge assured them. "It's only twenty-two lines. Really, really short lines."

"Seriously?"

"C'mon, guys," Hoist urged. "Let her read it."

"Uh. Okay." Her friends were all looking at her, and she looked down at her datapad in order to avoid having to see that. She wasn't sure if she wanted to see their response or not, so it was probably a good thing she hadn't tried to memorize the poem and had to read it off the screen; it took the choice away from her. "Some poems have titles, and some don't, but this one's called, uh. 'And other intertidal organisms.'"

She was quiet for a moment, then just went for it.

"Tide pools have more life
than you'd know
just to look at them
walking the rocks at the shore.
If you see them at all they might seem like sad, cut-off things,
stagnant water trapped by stones,
separate from the sea.
It's a lie. They're teeming
with an ecosystem all their own,
diverse and determined,
improvisational.
They survive every change
sent their way by the tides, the waves
the wind, the moon--
every change almost too much to live through.
Every change helping them live.
They're suited to it, this little bowl
cut off from the ocean
but a part of it.
Like your neighborhood,
or planet,
or curve of the galaxy."

When she stopped, there was silence for a few moments. Not long at all, but long enough that she felt incredibly self-conscious, and she closed out of the poem and moved to put her datapad away hurriedly. "So!" she started.

Whirl was the first to say something, right about then, luckily. "Oh my gosh, Wedge, that was good!"

"I don't know what I was expecting," Hot Shot admitted, "but it wasn't that. That was actually pretty cool!"

"Yeah! I've heard human songs before, and I still haven't heard anything like that," Hoist said.

"Excellent," Medix said, and that one word was so whole-sparked that Wedge felt a little like she had back on Halloween again, that quiet well done, Wedge when she'd stopped... hating having to be herself.

"I want to read some poems now, too," Whirl enthused. "Are there any you like? I thought Earth poems had to rhyme!"

"A lot do," Wedge said. "And in a lot of different ways... But they don't have to. There are tons of styles. Including Cybertron-style poetry," she teased Hot Shot. "They're called epics, apparently."

"Yeah, well, I don't think they're epic," Hot Shot returned. "I'll be sure to avoid those."

"Are you gonna write more?" Hoist asked, and held up both hands. "No pressure! I definitely want to look up some human poems for our Earth museum now."

"Yeah, I think I'm going to keep doing this," Wedge said, avoiding the urge to glance over to Medix again. "It's nice."

"I may not be familiar with the art form," Medix said, "but I think you're good at it."

"Thanks," Wedge said, and hoped Medix would still think that by the end of the night.

It took a bit for Whirl and Hoist to stop being enthusiastic about poetry in general (and Whirl about Wedge's skills in particular), though Medix had mercy and left her alone about it, and Wedge had never been more glad that Hot Shot was distractible. Wedge did recommend them a few poets, a few places to start looking, and when they all started turning in for the night one by one, when Medix got up to leave, Wedge excused herself quickly after.

"Hey, Medix."

Medix paused at their door, turning quizzically, and smiled at her. "Yes, Wedge?"

Wedge pulled out the second datapad, the one she'd grabbed that morning. It was a fresh one, empty except for this, something she could easily give away and Medix could get some use out of even if they didn't end up liking the poem on it. "I actually-- wrote another poem."

"And you want me to read it first?" They took the datapad with apparent surprise. "I'm incredibly flattered. I very much liked your first one. But I'm afraid I wouldn't really be able to give you very useful feedback. Whirl may know more about poetry, or at least song lyrics, than I do..."

"No, I mean..." It was in their hands; there was no taking it back now! "I wrote it for you."

Medix's expression didn't really change; they'd already looked flattered, and they was if anything maybe a bit more quizzical now. There was no reason they'd know what Wedge meant; Cybertron didn't have love poems. She wanted to excuse herself, let Medix read it in private and deal with whatever their response would be in the morning, but she knew that wouldn't be fair to Medix -- it wouldn't even be fair to herself, honestly, because if she did that she would never be able to get to sleep.

So she stood there, and fidgeted, and fought back her drive away right now instinct, as Medix looked down at the datapad. "My favorite color--" they began, and then glanced up. "I'm sorry, would you rather I read this...?"

They trailed off, apparently intuiting that Wedge was embarrassed, probably via the sheer detective-work of noticing that the air around her vents was distorted with heat. "I'll just read it to myself," they agreed, giving her a quick reassuring smile that she loved them more for, helplessly.

She knew exactly what it said; this one she had memorized, or more like it had burned into her processor as she'd tinkered with it so much she'd had to make herself stop. It had no title; it was just the poem. She watched Medix's face as their eyes scanned over the lines, and watched their expression change, knowing what part they'd gotten to when they got to it and knowing for a fact that it took them twice as long to read the final stanza as the rest of the poem before it.

my favorite color is blue
i can't remember what it was before, or if i had one
it was drowned out of me when i came here
foot by rising-tide foot

and not all water is blue but the ocean
holds nearly every shade imaginable
from gray so gray to green so green
they barely hold any other color
(but sea-green is another blue whatever its name tells you)

and the ocean takes glass, littered
carelessly discarded
breaks it into pieces if it isn't already
and wears it down
softens its edges and pushes it back onto the sand
blue, most of the time
the blue ones are my favorite, unsurprisingly
pale, bright, sometimes dark
frosted and soft-looking

but my favorite shade of blue is your eyes
and the sea and the glass try to get close to that shade
(but never could -- what could?)
your blue fills the final brackish inches of me, your
eyes, when they catch me, i can't help sinking into you
and in your sea my edges soften into something new
and changed each time you set me gently back upon your shore

"Oh," Medix said quietly, eyes wide, and the air around their own vents wavered. They looked up at Wedge, then back down at the datapad, then back up at her and held it out hesitantly. "Did you-- want--"

"You keep it," Wedge assured hurriedly. "It's a new datapad. You can use it for other things... even if you don't like the..." She tried to give Medix, or both of them, an out, "You can always delete it and--"

"No!" Medix's answer was quick and fervent, and they raised a hand to cover their mouth almost abashed, but kept speaking anyway. Their voice came out muffled. "No. Absolutely not."

Wedge relaxed; she hadn't realized she'd been holding herself half so tense as she had been. Her pistons actually gave a quiet psst. "You like it?" she asked, starting to smile hesitantly.

"I'm--" Medix started, and then dropped their hand. "I'm overwhelmed, honestly. This entire situation seems... incredibly un-real. In a good way." They added, almost under their breath, "Primus, I hope I'm not making an assumption."

"Not even a little," Wedge assured them. "I didn't want to be too coy about it; I know you don't always appreciate metaphors."

Medix looked back down at the datapad. "You took a risk for me."

"Yeah, well, you're worth risk."

"...You also switched to rhyming at the end."

Wedge grinned, crossing her arms. "Some poems rhyme. I can do both. It's allowed."

Medix sighed, glancing away, but a smile played at their lips. "You could tell me anything about poetry and I'd believe you."

"I could put a few more poems on there," Wedge said impulsively. Medix looked at her again. "Uh... Just a few, though."

"Wedge." Medix looked delighted, and Wedge resolved that she was going to write them another poem at some point, sometime soon, and when she did it was definitely going to contain the word muse. "Exactly how long have you been trying to--"

"It's been a while, and I think about you a lot."

Medix went quiet, eyes going big and round again, and it was Wedge's turn to look away, clearing her vents. "So, tomorrow, if I can have the datapad back for a few minutes, I can..."

"You can, yes." Medix stepped towards her, leaned in and pressed their lips to hers in a soft kiss. "I hope you aren't planning on disappearing for hours again," they added, politely ignoring the fact that Wedge was pretty much gaping at them now, her own eyes wide.

She started to grin, slowly, feeling absolutely over the moon, head over wheels. "What if you're invited?"

"...Then I absolutely hope we are planning on disappearing."

"Then it's a date," Wedge said, and the way Medix's eyes brightened she couldn't help kissing them again.