Notes: I will be honest - there have been perhaps three songfics I've ever liked, and none were yours. And of those, only one would have suffered if the song was removed from it. In short, songfics are dumb. In revenge, I present to you not just a song that you’ve probably never even heard of, but a remix of it, just because it’s one of my favourites - ‘Timekiller’ by Project Pitchfork, the And One remix. No love was harmed in the writing of this fic.

Wayward was a woman with a rather unusual life. One day she had been a mere hack artist, fanfic writer, and shameless-yet-nondrooling Transformers fangirl, the next she found herself caught up in rather silly adventures, trying to keep bad self-inserts and people without spellcheckers from destroying the universe. Or something like that; she wasn’t too sure. To her displeasure, she was still trapped in the Beast Wars. As near as she could determine, her mission was to defeat a Mary-Sue named BloodKatt before she - BloodKatt - managed to snag Megatron as a boyfriend and recreate the Beast Wars in her own image. Wayward hoped she would be able to go home after her task was completed.

In any case, Wayward - human woman trapped in the body of a Predacon bee - was stuck, and was unhappy. While being a robot had many advantages and she rather liked several of her team mates, she missed her real life. While she was certain that she’d reappear at home five minutes after she left, to her own perceptions, she had spent three weeks on Prehistoric Earth. She missed her fiancé, her friends, her family, even her silly cats, and was feeling rather homesick.

Worse, with no real distractions, living in what she had only known as a cartoon show, with nothing to ground her in her proper reality, she could feel herself slipping. One day, she was certain, she’d wake up and know that she had always been Wayward the Predacon, and that her human life had only been a dream …

Walking through the barracks, she suddenly realised that someone was playing their music loud enough to be heard in the hall. The strange part was that the lyrics were in English:

As soon as recognition set in, Wayward pounded on the door. The music stopped suddenly, almost guiltily, and a few seconds later Quickstrike opened the door. Before he could say anything, Wayward started, “That music …”

The fuzor rubbed the back of his head with his snake-hand. “I was playin’ it too loud again, wasn’t I? Didn’t think anyone was around this shift.”

“No, no, I don’t want you to turn it down - I want to come in and listen.”

Robot-face and snake-hand wore identical expressions of surprise. They cleared after a few seconds, and the snake swept back to gesture into the room. “Who’m I to argue when a pretty girl wants into my quarters? Have a seat, sugarbot.”

Quickstrike turned back to fiddle with the computer. Wayward sat on his desk. “I didn’t think you’d listen to this kind of stuff,” she admitted.

“Ah-h-h, you’re just like the others - they hear the accent and think I must be a big country fan,” accused Quickstrike, waving a selection of fingers at the technician. “Well I ain’t. Shania Twain’s pretty hot, though …”

“I didn’t mean the genre, I meant Earth-music in general,” Wayward explained. “You don’t even remember Cybertron; how can you have a taste for Earth music? Can you even understand the lyrics?”

Mismatched robot and attached snake regarded each other for a moment, until the robot shrugged. “It’s all gibberish to me, sugarbot - I just like the tune. Don’t know why we have the stuff; I just found it in our records one day and liked the sound of it. Bunch of other stuff, too.”

Wayward decided not to ask how a memory-damaged Cybertronian who couldn’t actually speak English would know who Shania Twain was, but didn’t ask. Technically, Quickstrike shouldn’t even be around at all; Wayward was pretty sure it was still Season One, even if all of the characters were around. She decided it was BloodKatt’s fault, as everything else tended to be.

“Oh-h-h, yes. That’s me, all right.”

Such as he could, Quickstrike raised an eyebrow. “What?”

Wayward smirked at him. “I’ll translate. Beware; I’m a lousy singer.”

Quickstrike looked considering. “You don’t harmonize too badly.”

The technician snorted. “Either you’re just being flattering, or my Mary-Sue powers are kicking in.”

The snake grinned because Quickstrike couldn’t. “I’m being flattering.”

“Mean. Just for that, I’ll continue,” said Wayward.

Wayward flinched slightly as the lyrics hit home again. ‘Forever’ was a bit longer than she wanted to remain in the Beast Wars.

“How much does it hurt you to be here?” asked Quickstrike. “Outside yer real home, I mean.”

“It doesn’t … hurt,” said Wayward slowly. “More like helplessness, finding yourself lost somewhere with no way home. More, my body is robot, but my mind is still human. It’s not living past my natural lifespan that I’m worried about, not yet, just … just a few years would throw my sense of time out completely. I like it here, I do, with you and Waspy and Terrorsaur and Scorponok, but it’s just not where I belong,” she sighed.

The song was longer than that, the chorus repeating a few more times, but by now Quickstrike could recognise it. They waited for the song to end before speaking again, and Quickstrike spoke first. “So that’s you, huh?”

“Vaguely, if you really work at it,” said Wayward. “Of course, pretty much any song can be made to relate to any situation. I could probably make a good argument for Scooter’s How Much Is The Fish.”

“I think we have that one …”

Wayward hopped down from her perch on Quickstrike’s desk. “I’ll hunt it up myself, now that I know it exists.” She grinned. “Thanks for playing your music too loud.”

“Taste of home, eh?” asked the fuzor. Then, quieter, “Must be nice to have one.”

She thanked him again, then retreated back to her room, partly to raid the music files, partly to get away from Quickstrike, who was rapidly slipping character. Whether it was the influence of the music that shouldn’t be there or her own homesickness spilling over, she didn’t know. The longer I stay, the more it damages both me and the entire continuity. I’ve got to get out of here.

But to escape, she had to defeat BloodKatt. She might have only had that one chance, and she failed. The exit already melted away …

Wayward scowled and called up some Journey instead.