The moment Ratchet locks the door, Drift collapses, all grace abandoned in a pile of energon and mangled plating on the supply closet floor. Major injuries, Ratchet’s HUD informs him. Patient in need of immediate medical attention. “I’m well fragging aware,” he grumbles, dismissing them. There’s little he can do for Drift right now, not without medical supplies. Drift’s got a better chance of survival locked in here bleeding out than back in the corridor waiting for Tarn and the rest of the DJD to hunt them down. For now, all Ratchet can do is make him more comfortable.
He drops to his knees. Drift looks a bit better in the dim emergency lighting than he had in the harsh white light of the hallway, but Ratchet’s under no illusions that his condition is anything less than dire. Vos’s shot had torn clean through a major energon line in his upper torso. Untreated, deactivation is inevitable.
Ignoring Drift’s half-conscious protestations that he could do it himself, Ratchet heaves him upright to lean against the wall and reaches into the wound. Crimping the line is out of the question with the tools to hand, but Ratchet does his best to burn it closed. Drift doesn’t so much as flinch. Hopefully, he’s going numb.
“There. That’s as good as you’re going to get.”
Drift’s optics flicker. “Thanks, Ratch.” He reaches out with his good arm, groping through the darkness until he gets a hold of Ratchet’s shoulder. “C’mere.”
Ratchet obliges, leaning against the wall at Drift’s side, and Drift drops his helm to rest on Ratchet’s shoulder. He presses a soft kiss to Ratchet’s scorched plating. Too late, he wonders why they spent so much time dancing around each other, waiting for the perfect moment that was never going to come. What could they have had, had they known the end was so near?
“Don’t overthink it,” Drift murmurs. “I love you.”
In the dark, the silence feels long. “I love you, too.”
He can feel Drift’s smile against his shoulder. “I know.” Suddenly, Drift tenses. His finials swivel back marginally, and he drags himself back upright. “Do you hear that?”
Ratchet shuts down every nonessential function in his frame, straining his audials. There. Footsteps.
“He’s coming,” Drift whispers. “Tarn. I know his footsteps.”
The fear that runs through Ratchet then is colder than empty space. He loses control of his fine motor systems, arms and hands weak with terror. The footsteps are louder now, unmistakable, ringing through their tiny hiding place.
Drift shifts, fluid and silent, to a crouching position in the middle of the closet. He presses a finger to his lipplates, looking at Ratchet with bright, serious optics. Ratchet doesn’t dare move or vent.
The footsteps stop. Drift puts a hand on his sword and rolls smoothly to his feet.
The door crashes inward. There, haloed in the corridor’s bright light, eyes blazing, is Tarn. He raises his blaster. Drift raises his swords.
“You don’t want to do that.”
Starscream makes it almost all the way to the door of her apartment before the tears start. Mercifully, she’d managed to convince security to leave her at the elevators, but still, it’s humiliating. There are security cameras in this hallway, and though she knows she’s left Soundwave behind with the rest of the Decepticons, she can’t help but feel watched. Someone, somewhere, could be monitoring this hallway right now. Someone in the future could be reviewing footage, looking for evidence of Emperor Starscream losing her cool. That seems to be a topic of interest these days. Something about her misery compels them, compels everyone. She suffers beautifully, or in some satisfying way, she supposes. That satisfaction, the pleasure of seeing someone who so thoroughly deserved it brought so low, has always been just out of her reach.
She’s not sure what she hoped to accomplish with that trial. Revenge, maybe? To humiliate Megatron in the same way he’d humiliated her so many times? Futile, juvenile, laughable. Nothing said or done in a court of law, no olive branch condescendingly offered, no story told could match the kind of humiliation of being beaten into a bloody pulp in front of one’s Air Corps. Of being berated, having her psyche flayed and left raw and open on the floor between them at a command meeting. Of--
No. No matter. She had hoped to accomplish something, but as she so often does, had only furthered her own humiliation, made herself the laughingstock of the trial, destroyed her approval ratings for the next fortnight. Good work, Starscream. You must be very proud.
She sees herself in her washroom mirror, tear-streaked and wild-eyed. What a mess. She sees the bottle in her hand, has little recollection of picking it up. It must have happened since walking through the door. Did she lock the door?
Yes, she locked the door.
Not that that had ever stopped him.
She collapses between the door and her couch. Drops the bottle, spills engex and glass all over the floor. Good going, Leader. You must be very proud.
She had been. She’d been proud of the speech as she wrote it, and then, when she’d taken the stand, it had just… gone from her head. Suddenly, she was on the Nemesis again and the only weapon left to her was her voice and she swung and she missed, shot and she hit him but it never mattered, and she was left sobbing on the floor of her quarters again.
The more things change…
Slowly, she picks her way out of the mess of glass and engex to a cleaner, safer part of the floor. Then, she curls up on her side, offlines her optics, and tries not to cry so hard she purges.
She wakes the next morning to a mess of an apartment, a pounding headache, and over a thousand notifications on her work communicator. Not for the first time, she wonders why Megatron didn’t just take the shot.
To say Starscream “woke up” from his coma seems an odd turn of phrase to Wheeljack. Starscream’s spent very little of the last two days conscious. It’s normal considering the amount of damage done by the Talisman, Ratchet assures him. Everything is going as expected. Starscream’s actually progressing quicker than Ratchet anticipated, and he’s getting stronger every day. Ratchet expects a full recovery.
Wakefulness hasn’t been kind to Starscream. At first, he’d been largely catatonic, staring blearily at the ceiling and not showing much in the way of awareness or reactivity. Then late yesterday afternoon, he’d suddenly become very aware and highly reactive, nearly offlining himself and poor First Aid in the course of one of the most violent panic attacks Wheeljack’s ever seen him have. Since then, his time awake has mostly consisted of more panic and more listless staring, interspersed with some crying. He’s talked a bit with Wheeljack and Ratchet, but so far, he hasn’t been able to stay coherent for more than a minute or two at a time, and when he’s coherent, he’s scared.
Pain has been a trigger for Starscream for as long as Wheeljack’s known him. Not all pain, and not every time, but most strong pain tended to get to him. Starscream has never been able to associate physical pain with anything other than violence. It gets him caught up in his head, lost in memories of the war. Now, with the processor damage and exhaustion and drugs making everything hazy, he’s clearly having a hard time telling the difference between reality and memory, and Wheeljack knows from listening to him mutter to himself that he’s having trouble remembering where and when he is. He’s terrified and confused and in pain, and Ratchet said he’s well enough that some physical contact won’t hurt him, so now Wheeljack’s in bed with him.
Starscream had, well, “ asked” is a bit of a strong word, one that implies a level of communication and coherence that hadn’t been present, but as far as Starscream was capable of asking for anything, he’d asked Wheeljack to join him in the berth. He’d tugged weakly at Wheeljack’s hand and whispered, “Please?” and Wheeljack has never been able to deny him anything, least of all this. So he’d climbed carefully into the berth and arranged himself so Starscream was next to the wall, unable to fall out of the berth even if he thrashed around, and he’d been so scared to touch Starscream. Yesterday, Wheeljack had moved too quickly and scared him, and since then, he’s been wary of giving him anything else to be worried about. Starscream, apparently, had no such qualms, and was on him in an instant, curling up into Wheeljack’s side and sighing happily when Wheeljack put an arm around his shoulders. He’d fallen asleep within minutes, and he’s still sleeping soundly with his face hidden in Wheeljack’s chest and their legs tangled carefully together, mindful of the wreck the Talisman had made of his frame.
“Get off,” Starscream snaps, batting Soundwave’s hand away. He struggles to his feet alone. It takes him three tries to get his fractured leg strut to support his weight. “I don’t need your help.”
“Soundwave: did—”
“‘Soundwave: shut up,’” Starscream mocks. “I don’t recall asking for your input or assistance.” You did not help me when I needed it, his mind says. I hate you, I hate you, I envy you, I hate you.
Soundwave reflects on the past thirty minutes, the command meeting that culminated in Megatron’s beating of Starscream. It hadn’t been the worst beating Soundwave has witnessed, not even the worst this month, but it was… intense. Starscream’s voice had been loud; his mind louder.
Starscream had pushed Lord Megatron, made an attempt to undermine his authority, and Megatron had put the traitor back in his place. So often these days, Starscream needs to be put back in his place. Soundwave, though, remains loyal. Soundwave understands when to back down.
“Megatron’s plan: wise, successful. You must be very proud.”
Megatron pours Soundwave another glass of engex. “Thank you, Soundwave. Your intelligence was, of course, invaluable.” Soundwave inclines his head slightly before taking the drink. “Almost like old days, isn’t it?”
“Affirmative.”
Megatron smiles.
“Lord Megatron,” Starscream begs. “My Lord, please, I meant no disrespect.” He is on his knees in the center of the throne room. Soundwave stands beside the throne, watching as Lord Megatron backhands Starscream hard enough to send him sprawling on the floor.
“Pathetic,” he sneers. “Do you think your groveling will save you?”
“Combaticons: returned. Intelligence… In-tel.” Soundwave pauses, gathering his thoughts. Sometimes, his words leave him mid-sentence, and it takes him a moment to recover them. Sometimes, they never return. He gives up on the sentence and pulls the relevant files up onscreen, pointing to them with a significant look at Megatron.
Megatron scoffs. “What, am I to interpret signs, now, Soundwave? Spit it out.”
Soundwave finds Starscream collapsed in a chair in his laboratory. He’s hurting, inside and out, the kinds of pain that seep blue and yellow in the air around him. Soundwave doesn’t have much to offer, but he does have a cube of energon and a field made calm by years of careful practice.
Megatron has left the ship, presumably to burn off the excess energy generated in his rather dramatic and public fight with Starscream. Soundwave believes it was about Starscream’s continued romantic involvement with his trine, but lately, his assessments of Megatron and Starscream’s interactions have grown less accurate. His assessments of Megatron in general have grown less accurate. He’s unsure of how to proceed.
“Starscream: injured. Soundwave has medical supplies.”
“Frag off.”
“Negative.”
“Soundwave…”
“Lord Megatron: acted out of line.” Starscream’s head snaps up. “Starscream: did nothing provoke violence.”
Starscream stares wide-optic’d at him for a long moment before shaking his head minutely. When he looks back at Soundwave’s visor, he’s smirking again. “Nice of you to finally notice.”
“Soundwave: aware of changing dynamics.”
“Good.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Jazz assures them, hopping up on the medberth and crossing his legs.
First Aid steps quietly outside to purge his tanks into the waste bin.
Ratchet grimaces. “Jazz, if it’s even half as bad as it looks, I’m going to dismember you and leave you in the recycler.” Jazz’s left wrist is still encased in one half of a pair of broken, sparking stasis cuffs. His right hand is free. His right hand is also missing its pinky and thumb, and something about the angle his wrist is at is wrong. “What did you do?”
Jazz fakes indignation. “I removed myself from a situation!”
Ratchet would put his face in his hands had he not just sanitized them. It’s not so much the sight of the injury that’s disturbing. Ratchet and First Aid have both seen worse. Rather, it’s the visceral thought of how exactly one would remove one’s own fingers. Well, that, and the bits of paint, energon, and crumpled plating stuck to the inside of the stasis cuffs. Lovely.
“Did you leave your missing fingers in the situation, by any chance?” Not that Ratchet imagines they’re salvageable.
Jazz smiles innocently. “Uhh, would you rather I had brought them? They’re kind of, well, mangled.”
Of course, this is the point at which First Aid reenters the room. He changes his mind about this decision rather quickly and goes back out in the hall to throw up some more.
Ratchet picks Jazz’s hand up and starts inspecting the remains. It can’t really be said that there are stubs left, because in removing his outer and innermost fingers, Jazz had also succeeded in removing a good chunk of his hand. The wound that used to be his pinky runs the length of his entire palm, and all that’s left of his thumb is the lonely half of an interphalangeal joint. Ratchet would need to rebuild a good third of his hand. Not the hardest surgery, nor the longest, but hands are complex. It would be delicate, frustrating. Ratchet is getting too old for this.
Unbidden, the phantom sensation of tearing protoform and snapping joints comes to mind. It’s hard to look at self-inflicted injuries without feeling the sort of willpower it must have taken to inflict them. Somehow, they always make Ratchet sicker than all but the worst of the accidents and battle wounds he sees.
Well, at least it’s not bleeding, and Jazz isn’t screaming. Jazz has trained himself to cut off bits of his sensornet at will, and he must have restricted energon flow to the areas before pulling his hand loose, because there’s a bit of dead protoform around the periphery of each wound and a definite lack of any dried energon.
“I hope your escape was worth a two hour surgery,” Ratchet grumbles. “And two weeks of recovery.”
Jazz grins. “It was. ‘Specially to see the look on Soundwave’s face.”
This time, Ratchet does put his face in his hands.
“I know you don’t like the side effects, Red, but you can’t deny the improvements in your mental health. You’re doing great.” Rung smiles.
Red Alert really can’t deny them. For the first time in her life, she feels somewhat in control of her own thoughts. She can think more clearly than she thought was possible, and it’s more than worth the heat intolerance and the twenty pounds gained. “Yeah. It’s been… yeah.” She can actually talk about the improvements without tearing up now, which is a change. Max still can’t. She keeps bursting into tears when Red Alert does stuff like getting up before nine in the morning or going outside on her own. Red doesn’t blame her. It’s been a hell of a year, and the last two months have been something of a miracle.
“You’ll need to keep coming in monthly for the injections, but we can start coordinating those appointments with your appointments with me, so I won’t be dragging you down here any more than usual,” Rung tells her. “I’ll notify your outpatient team; they’ll reach out to you shortly.”
“Thank you.”
“It is my genuine pleasure to see you doing so well, Red Alert. I’ll see you on Monday?”
“See you Monday.”
She actually smiles on her way out of the office. Sure, she’s jittery like she always is after a session, a little raw at the edges, but she’s smiling. She’s optimistic. She has a treatment plan that’s working, and she feels like a real person again.
Then, she steps out into the July heat and remembers the side effects they’d been discussing. “Possible reduced heat tolerance” her ass. It’s not even ninety degrees out and she feels like she’s going to die. The quarter-mile walk to the bus stop feels like an eternity and she seriously considers calling Max or Sides to come pick her up.
Somehow, she makes it and survives the poorly air conditioned trip home.
By the time she reaches the blissfully cool apartment she shares with Fortress Maximus, she’s sticky with sweat and furious about it, all cheer from her appointment gone. Apparently, both the anger and the heat show on her face, because the first thing Max says upon coming around the corner is, “Jesus! Warm enough over there, Red?”
“Mmnn.” She’s already taking off her shirt as she stalks to the bedroom, and by the time she’s face down on their bed with the fan running, she’s naked and free of the sensory horror of sweaty clothes. “Hi,” she mumbles once she feels a bit more civil.
“Hi, there,” Max laughs. “I would ask if that show was for me, but I think if I touched you, you might kill me.”
“You’re right,” she tells the comforter. Then, because this is Max she’s talking to, “Maybe later.”
She can hear the smile in Max’s voice when she says, “Well, for now, I’ll get you some water, yeah?”
“Please.” Beat. “Love you.”
“Love you, too, hot stuff.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“--any chance of--”
--hurts, I can hardly breath with the--
“--seen yourself? I don’t--”
--late, always too late, didn’t see it coming and now--
“Soundwave.”
“--going to have to amputate--”
“Soundwave.”
--in case of another em--”
“--don’t want him staying the night without--”
“Soundwave!”
Deep blue and red, permanent pain and solid determination, Starscream trying to get his attention. Soundwave reaches for her mind and she reaches back, clumsy and blind but ready.
“Soundwave, focus on me.” Hand in Soundwave’s hand, EM field on his EM field. He hurts and Starscream does, too, and the colors of whatever’s torn them apart are the same--
The Matrix. The Talisman, he skims from Starscream’s thoughts. Unsurvivable, but he and Starscream have always been stubborn.
“--how long until--”
“--me three units of the--”
“Soundwave, listen to my voice.”
Her voice is unique; Soundwave grabs at it. Scratchy.
--not the time, I can’t believe they brought trainees into a disaster zone--
“I’m squeezing your hand once.”
She squeezes his hand once.
“Between the two of us, we should be--”
“Soundwave, you’ve been comatose for a week.”
That can’t be right.
“You’re in the intensive care unit. The battle ended five days ago. Your cassettes are alright. Squeeze my hand once if you understand me.”
Soundwave squeezes her hand once.
“I’m going to squeeze your hand every time I talk, okay? That’s how you’ll know it’s me.”
Soundwave always knows when it’s her. The problem is hearing her over the noise. Even so, he squeezes once.
Squeeze. “Can you feel anything? Once for yes, twice for no.”
One two three. Yes no? Sometimes? He’s having trouble with differentiating his body from others.
Squeeze. “...Okay. Are you in pain?”
Yes. One squeeze, hard. Yes yes yes.
Squeeze. Frustration, outwardly directed. “I told them you were. I’ll get the doctor back in here to up your pain meds in a few minutes.”
You? Soundwave is dying to ask. There’s something down his throat, a ventilator, and he’s far too disoriented for words, but he needs to know. He squeezes a few times, rolls unseeing optics in what he thinks might be Starscream’s direction. Sends a message consisting of an unclarified question.
“Me?”
Yes. Once.
“Well, the Autobot medics aren’t entirely incompetent, I suppose. I am alive and conscious, after all.” Starscream’s field flickers amusement, mixing with the relief from the room next to them in a pleasant swirl of orange and pink. “I’ve had worse.” Soundwave doesn’t doubt that she has. “Do you want the cassettes to come in? They’ve been waiting for you to wake up all day.”
Too much. Soundwave’s just gotten himself reoriented. Starscream, he sends to her, just the one word and want want want. Hold me, he wants to say, hold me and let me feel you, but he can’t quite make the words line up the right way.
Starscream, as always, understands. Proximity sensors trip near Soundwave’s helm, and softly, Starscream presses a kiss to his helm.
Beepbeep. Beepbeep. Beepbeep.
Ratchet heaves a sigh and clicks “accept.” “Sideswipe?”
Voices in the background. “Hey, uh, Ratchet? Um, we’re coming to you, we’re almost there. Um, Sunstreaker and Bluestreak were sparring—”
“You were sparring, too!”
“Shut up, Sunny! I meant when he hurt his ankle!”
“Bluestreak hurt his ankle?”
“Yeah, he, something snapped, and he can’t walk on it, so we started walking him down here, but there’s something wrong. He’s all… he doesn’t look good.”
Ratchet’s about to ask what he looks like when the medbay door slides open and his three idiots tumble in, Bluestreak supported between Sideswipe and Sunstreaker. As Ratchet suspected, Bluestreak was in the early stages of shock, trembling and pale-optic’d. “Come on,” he urges, pushing them towards the nearest bed. “Come on, sit him down there.”
“Hi, Ratchet,” Bluestreak croaks as Sunstreaker and Sideswipe deposit him on the berth. Sure enough, Bluestreak’s ankle is crooked.
“What were you two idiots up to?” Ratchet sighs as he plugs into Bluestreak’s wrist port. Sure enough, he’s greeted by a cascade of pain receptor overload errors. No wonder Bluestreak’s out of it. “You’re in shock, for sure. Breathe, alright? I’ll start clearing some of this up.”
Bluestreak nods listlessly. Sunstreaker crowds up behind Ratchet, leaving Sideswipe sitting on an empty berth. “Is he gonna be alright?” Sunstreaker’s had a protective streak since he was little, one that’s started to shade into anxiety as he grows older.
Ratchet shoos him away. “He’s fine. It’s just a minor glitch; too many error messages pile up and the processor starts to lag. All I have to do is help him to start clearing the messages and he’ll be fine.”
“You sure?” Sunstreaker’s wringing his hands.
“I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been online, Sunny,” Ratchet grumbles, cuffing him around the finials. “He’ll be fine. You three need to take it a bit easier when you’re sparring, alright?” Ratchet sets the error clearance program to run in the background of his processor and pulls a chair over, sitting down to investigate Bluestreak’s ankle. “I just gave you a moderate pain patch, so you shouldn’t feel anything more than discomfort, but let me know if you do,” he tells Bluestreak.
A joor later, Bluestreak’s ankle is splinted and he’s sitting sandwiched between the twins, drinking a cube of medgrade and waiting for Ratchet to synthesize a new ankle strut. In the meantime, Jazz has arrived to chew them all out for playing too rough.
The twins are leaning on Bluestreak like they’re trying to protect them from Jazz’s displeasure, and Jazz is ranting about having taught them better than to break things sparring. Bluestreak looks appropriately chagrined; the twins do not. Ratchet does his best not to smile and encourage them.
It’s domestic, pleasant despite the injury, the kind of afternoon they’re running short of the longer the war drags on. It’s good to have things like this, normal accidents and minor injuries. Peaceful in its own chaotic way.
Starscream should have been used to this by now. Maybe, if he had access to the sort of equipment he’d had at university, he would have built himself some sort of super-resistant plating. Most likely, Megatron would have retaliated with super-strength of his own, the permanently defeated part of his processor informed him. Anything to keep Starscream down. The only thing that helped was groveling, and that was a little difficult when he didn’t know exactly what he’d done. Skywarp had snitched about something in an attempt at some sort of childish prank, and now Starscream was paying the price. Well, vague apologies and self-deprecation were always an option.
He started with the reliable, “My Lord, I’m so sorry,” Starscream gasped through the hand crushing his vocalizer. “Give me another chance--”
“You’ve had your chances,” Megatron roared. He pulled Starscream up off his feet, closer to his face, and something in Starscream’s vocalizer made a sick cracking sound. “Every day, I give you more leeway than anyone else in this Unicron-forsaken army, and what do you do with it? You make a fool of yourself. You are an embarrassment, you miserable glitch.”
Starscream cringed away, offlining his optics and resolutely not thinking about the gathering crowd on the bridge. His reputation would be taking another nosedive, it seemed. He dismissed a notification informing him his fuel pump was cycling at twice the rate it should be.
“Look me in the eye when I’m talking to you!” Megatron shook him once like a turbofox with a petrorabbit, then flung him into the wall. There was a bang and an odd feeling like breaking plastic deep in his helm, and then--
--he was on the floor. On his side, curled up? No, on his back, looking up at… what? A blurr of color? A mess of error messages?
Oh. He’d hit his head. With the realization came the pain, and with the pain, the panic. He had to reorient himself, had to figure out what was happening before--
Before that. An impact on his side, crumpling plating and tearing through his sensornet like sheet lightning. He tried to roll with it, but another hit quickly followed the first and just as his vision was beginning to clear, Megatron’s pede slammed into his helm and there was darkness again.
His chronometer informed him only half a second had elapsed between losing consciousness and regaining it, but his sensory suite informed him he was laying just inside the door to his quarters, so that couldn’t be right.
Wonderful. He could imagine what he’d missed. Being dragged semiconscious through the halls of the ship, screamed at the whole way. Maybe kicked a bit more. Thrown into his quarters like so much trash and left to wake up on his own, or not. Wonderful. He opened a comms line.
::Knockout. I need you in my quarters.::
::Primus, Starscream, again?::
::Are you going to help me, or are you going to ridicule me?::
::I’m on my way.::
The last rotation had been an absolute fragging disaster. Fort Max knew well enough to be ready for a whole variety of reactions. Tempers were high and energy was low. They probably all could do with a medbay visit. They’d been fairly quiet for the last few minutes, just standing in the control center together supervising the last of the titan’s transformation protocols. He was ready for something to give.
Still, he wasn’t ready for Red to start seizing.
Prowl’s the first to react. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit.” He grabs Red by the upper arms and lowers him to the ground. “Stand back,” he tells Fortress Maximus, “and call Cerebros.”
Fort Max feels stupid, slow, frozen watching his partner convulse on the ground. Prowl’s kneeling next to him, no longer touching him, and some training module stored in the back of Fort Max’s processor reminds him not to restrain a mech having a seizure. “What’s happening?” he asks like it’s not playing out right in front of him.
Prowl puts his hands under Red Alert’s head. “Seizure. Sometimes, after shadowplay, especially if he was fighting it so hard, or if he hit his head…” Prowl’s optics go fuzzy for a moment, then he cycles them and his gaze snaps back to Max. “Call Cerebros. Get him down here now.”
“Right, right.” Max isn’t sure of exactly what he says to Cerebros. His mouth feels heavy, fuzzy, and he can’t stop watching Red Alert seizing on the floor. Oral lubricant foams out of the corner of his mouth and his head hits Prowl’s hands over and over again.
Cerebros hangs up on him, and he realizes he hasn’t said anything for a long time. Has it been a long time? Red is still seizing. That can’t be good.
Finally, finally, he stops, going completely limp, head lolling against Prowl’s palms. “Fifty-six seconds.” Max blinks. That can’t be right. It was forever.
One of the prison staff died seizing, he remembers. There were a lot of choking and gagging noises. It took a long, long time.
Red Alert is coming around, optics fizzling on completely unfocused, trained in subtly different directions. Cerebros comes into the room.
“Max?”
Max watched the whole thing. He’d bled out of his eyes.
“Fortress Maximus. Max!”
“Walk Red to the medbay. Max is having a flashback.”
“Shouldn’t you be the one to walk him? You are the medic.”
Gurgling, choking noises, Lightning Strike’s spark and optics guttering. Red Alert struggles to his feet, leaning on Prowl’s shoulder.
“Wha’happened?”
“You had a seizure, Red, go with Prowl. I don’t want Max to be alone with you right now. Red will be okay for a few minutes.”
“Alright.”
“…Me? ‘Kay.”
“Max, baby, are you with me?”
It’s funny. Max is both with him and not, acutely aware of the room around him and totally lost in the memory of Lightning Strike’s death. He nods listlessly.
“Okay. I’m just going to sit here until you come back to me, alright?”
“Drift,” Rodimus whines. “Drift, I can’t go any further. We have to stop.”
“We’ll take a break at the next big rock and have a snack. You still have some trail mix left, yeah?”
“Nooooo, I don’t mean pause.” Rodimus drapes himself dramatically against the nearest tree. “I need to stop. I’m done, Drift, I’m gonna die.”
Drift continues down the mountain, picking his way carefully through the maze of rocks and roots. “You’ll be alright,” he says. “It’s just two more miles.”
“But I can’t make it two more miles! Look at me, Drift! I’m shaking!”
When Drift turns around, Rodimus is still leaning against the tree, holding his hand up for Drift to see it shaking. He’s dropped his trekking poles and shed his backpack and, to his credit, he does look exhausted. His face is almost as red as his hair and he’s covered in dirt from the knees down.
“Roddy, we literally cannot stop here. We have to make it to the campsite, and it’s going to be dark in a little over two hours.”
“I’m hungry.”
“Then, I told you, we’ll stop at the next bunch of rocks and sit down for a while. I’m pretty sure there’s some right up ahead that are a good size.”
“That’s too faaaaaaaar.”
Drift hooks his trekking poles to his backpack, returns to Rodimus and his tree, and hauls him upright. “Come on. We are making it to that campsite if I have to literally drag you.”
Somehow, and with minimal dragging, they make it to a cluster of mossy boulders just off the trail. They’re moving at maybe a mile an hour, but that’s alright. As long as Drift doesn’t have to set up camp in complete darkness, he’s alright.
It was, he thinks, a little unfair to invite Rodimus along on a hike that would require fourteen miles of hiking on the first day, but he’d told Roddy exactly what he was signing up for. Roddy had agreed, he understood what was required of him, he understood they couldn’t stop anywhere but the campsite. He’s being a brat about it, that’s all.
“You gonna make it over there?” he calls as he fills up his water bag at the stream. Cold, clear, probably all rainwater from the night before. No real need to filter it, but he would anyway. Better safe than sorry.
Rodimus is draped over one of the smaller rocks, pouring what’s left of his trailmix into his mouth. “Mmmmmmm,” he responds, which Drift takes as a yes. It has to be a yes, no matter Rodimus’s intention, because they really can’t stop.
“It’s all pretty flat from here, I promise.”
“It had better be. My knees hurt so bad.”
“Lean on your trekking poles a bit more. It should help.” Drift starts squeezing the stream water into one of their gallon containers.
“Will it help the fact that everything else on my body hurts, too?”
Drift laughs. “Maybe. Come on, you’ll be alright.”
“…Focus on recovering survivors from sector, from sector… Sorry, focus on…”
“Prowl?” Jazz steps a bit closer. A thin line of energon runs from Prowl’s nose.
“Focus on recovering survivors…” Prowl’s optics flicker once, twice, and then his knees buckle.
“Frag.” Jazz catches him, lowers him to the ground, and he’s already coming around by the time Jazz has him sitting with his head between his knees. “Hey, Prowler,” he says when Prowl’s optics come back on, dim and unfocused. “I think it might be time for you to go see a medic, huh?”
Prowl leans hard into him like he used to do during the war, when they’d sit together after long days. Then, with a shudder and a soft, stifled noise, he pushes back upright and shakes Jazz’s concerned hand off his shoulder. “No, I’m alright. Just got dizzy for a moment, that’s all.”
Jazz pulls him back down when he tries to stand up. It’s far too easy. Prowl likely never would have gotten to his feet even without Jazz’s intervention. “Nah, that didn’t look like dizzy. You look like the fragging Pit, Prowl, c’mon.”
[LATER, EN ROUTE TO SANCTUARY STATION]
“I don’t deserve it,” Prowl insists. You’re wasting your time. You should leave me here.”
“Prowl, baby, that’s not how it works. You don’t deserve basic care, it’s just something everyone’s entitled to. It’s one of those things, you know? No matter how bad it gets, no matter how bad you get, you deserve medical care and a safe place to sleep and all that.”
“Jazz…”
“No, hey, listen to me.” Jazz takes Prowl’s helm in both hands, cradling his face gently. “You deserve help. I am going to help you, whether you think you deserve it or not. Do you understand me?” Prowl’s silent for a long time. Tears drip down his face, and Jazz wipes them away with the pads of his thumbs. “You gotta say something, lover.”
“I…” Prowl’s voice breaks into static a few times before he manages, “Jazz, I’m so sorry.”
“I know you are. And we’re gonna fix it, alright? We’re gonna fix it, but first we need to fix you. You deserve it, and me and Soundwave are gonna fix you.”
“I love you,” Prowl whispers.
“I love you, too. C’mere.” Jazz pulls Prowl in close, guiding his head to rest against Jazz’s chest. For a moment, Prowl just sits there in Jazz’s arms. Then, slowly, he returns the hug, and all at once, he breaks, sobs into Jazz’s plating like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.
After a few minutes of crying, Jazz eases them down to lay on the berth. Prowl throws an arm and a leg over Jazz, dragging him close and purring contentedly when Jazz knocks their foreheads together. Jazz tucks himself back into his customary spot, head under Prowl’s chin and thigh between his knees. They fall together so easily, even after five years apart. Jazz wonders how he ever lived without this.
“What were you thinking, you Primus-damned idiot?” Jazz strokes Prowl’s chevron and the sides of his helm, pressing gently against clusters of sensors he knows by now make the helmache a little more bearable. He’s hot to the touch even with the coolant Ratchet’s feeding into his lines. “You knew you couldn’t take all of that at once.”
“M’sorry,” Prowl slurs, leaning into Jazz’s touch. He doesn’t look sorry. His field reads tired, satisfied, proud, and his face says Jazz is going to hear all about Prowl’s ability to analyze massive amounts of data on the fly later. Idiot. “But. Battle. We… you know.” He trails off, optics dilating and contracting as they try to focus on Jazz’s face.
“We won,” Jazz finishes for him. “Yeah, yeah, you’re the best at your job and we should all acknowledge it more. Save the spiel for when you can talk straight, yeah?” Prowl’s language centers and fine motor control are some of the last systems to come fully online following a bad crash.
Prowl, half-conscious and scrambled from a joor of cascading processor crashes, nods vaguely.
“Good mech.” Prowl purrs appreciatively, optics flickering offline. Jazz keeps massaging his helm. Ratchet has them holed up in the room usually reserved for Jazz’s post-mission comedowns to give Prowl some privacy and quiet, and it lets both of them relax enough to be affectionate. He’s laying down next to Prowl, legs tangled together, fingers twined between them. Their shared frame heat pools between them, heavy and familiar and comforting.
Prowl’s purring rumbles through Jazz’s frame and he responds with a purr of his own, tucking his head under Prowl’s chin and settling down for some recharge. They both need it, and Ratchet will be back to wake them before they’re needed anywhere.
He lets himself drift off.
Ratchet: gonna have to take a rain check on that officers’ meeting
Me: Oh?
Ratchet: [image.2912]
Despite the late hour and the lingering stress of the extraction mission, Optimus finds himself smiling. The picture Ratchet’s sent him shows Jazz and Prowl on one of the medbay berths. Well, Optimus assumes it’s Jazz and Prowl. It’s certainly Prowl’s back, and that’s Jazz’s arm. They’ve managed to fit themselves onto one berth and under one blanket, no doubt to Ratchet’s vocal displeasure. As sweet as the picture is, Optimus is concerned. While they don’t look terribly injured, Optimus knows neither of them would stay overnight in medbay without cause.
Me: Are they alright?
Ratchet: eh
Ratchet: stable, yes
Ratchet: spec ops missions. you know how I feel about them
Me: I do
Ratchet: prowl’s crashed four times since arriving on base. jazz seems suspiciously fine and level headed
Ratchet: as far as I’m concerned if they fell into recharge in my medbay they’re staying there until they wake up on their own
Me: I am more than willing to wait. You know I defer to your judgment, Ratchet.
Ratchet: you’d better
Ratchet: afthead
Optimus smiles. Yes, he can wait.
“Please.”
A strike. “Please what?” Another strike.
“Please, Prowl, sir. Please.”
Strike. “I asked you a question, pet. ‘Please,’ what? What do you want? Do you want me to stop? Do you want me to keep going?”
Jazz just sobbed. His optic fluid had long since soaked through the soft blindfold and ran freely down his face, dripping to the floor a few meters below where he’s suspended in a net of cables. Prowl has rigged him up beautifully, and he can’t wait to frag him. First, though, he’s got to get Jazz nice and sensitive.
He aims the flogger at a sensitive transformation seam on Jazz’s inner thigh, near but not quite touching his soaking valve, and strikes him hard. Jazz cries out, and Prowl hits him again in the same place. “Do you want me to let you overload?”
“Yes,” Jazz wails. He’s trembling all over, taught and crackling with building charge. “Yes, yes, yes, Prowl, please.”
“Do you deserve it?” Jazz can’t seem to find an answer for that, but Prowl has one. He lays a soft hit on Jazz’s leaking spike, then one on his valve. Jazz screams, his vocalizer spits static, and with a final hit to his spike, overloads so hard he knocks himself offline.
It’s incredible: his whole lithe frame locks up in a pained contortion, cable-wrapped waist arching beautifully. Electricity snaps in bright blue arcs, almost the same shade as his visor, across the gaps in his armor. Prowl’s glad he remembered to record this session, because he wants to hear those desperate, panting whimpers for the rest of his functioning. Then, Jazz goes entirely limp.
He hangs still in the cabling for a long moment, vents running at full tilt. Then, just as Prowl makes his way around to stand by Jazz’s head, his visor comes back online at half-brightness.
“Nggh,” he manages. Prowl puts a hand on Jazz’s cheek and Jazz leans into it as much as he can, visor flickering back offline. He’s usually semiverbal after a session like this, and Prowl isn’t expecting much more than some vague muttering and bids for physical contact out of him in the next six or seven hours. In fact, he’s banking on this session having worn Jazz out enough to get some sleep. Primus knows he needs it.
“Give me a color and a number,” Prowl prompts, patting the side of Jazz’s face gently.
“Nnh, green. Seven.” Jazz shudders, then goes limp once more. “T’me… bed?”
“Of course.” Prowl’s already lowering him to the ground. “You were very good for me today.” Jazz smiles drunkenly. “Mm.” As soon as he’s free of the cables, he worms his way into Prowl’s lap and tucks his helm under Prowl’s chin. “Carry me?”
“If you insist.”
By the time Prowl reaches their berth, already set up with blankets, pillows, and energon for later, Jazz is halfway to recharge. Prowl sets him down gently, then settles next to him.
“I love you.”
“M’love you, too.”
Starscream’s optics are flickering and dim, skating over Wheeljack and Chromia in strange, darting patterns. Wheeljack realizes what’s going to happen right as Chromia reaches for Windblade.
“He doesn’t recognize—”
“Get back,” Starscream snarls, clutching Windblade’s limp frame close and lashing out at Chromia, talons extended. His teeth are bared, and Wheeljack winces at the sight of several broken ones. “Don’t touch her. I told you, she doesn’t know anything.”
Chromia jumps back before he can scratch her “What the frag?”
Wheeljack pushes to the front of the group, dropping to his knees beside Chromia and putting a hand on her shoulder. “He doesn’t recognize you,” he repeats.
“I don’t give a fuck. Windblade needs—”
“He’s trying to protect her,” Wheeljack snaps. “Clearly, he’s been protecting her. Look, he thinks we’re here to torture them.” Again, he doesn’t add. They’re kneeling in a puddle of Starscream and Windblade’s energon right now.
Starscream’s back himself into the far corner again, and taken Windblade with him. Chromia’s right about one thing. They need to get both of them out of there and to the medics sooner rather than later. But how to do it without getting mauled by Starscream?
Starscream’s optics flicker on. His hand twitches in Wheeljack’s.
“Hey,” Wheeljack greets, keeping his voice soft and level. “You with me?” The first sound out of Starscream’s mouth is a burst of static as he struggles to sit up. “No, no, hey, stay down.” Wheeljack restrains him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You’re really hurt.”
Starscream whines. “Win—” More static. “Win’bla’e?” His right optic fizzles out.
Wheeljack squeezes his hand. “She’s alright. She’s here. You kept her safe.”
Starscream somehow wills both optics back online. “...Where?”
Wheeljack pets his hand and forearm, careful to avoid any new welds. “She’s in surgery right now. It’s okay, she’s stable, she’ll be out soon.”
Starscream’s brow furrows. Wheeljack can practically see his processor struggling to make sense of Wheeljack’s words. “You?”
“Huh? Oh. I’m okay, Star, I’m fine.”
Starscream nods with a foggy seriousness that almost makes Wheeljack laugh. “Good.” Then, his optics offline again and he seems to drop straight into recharge.
Wheeljack pulls his chair closer, gets comfortable leaning against the berth. He folds the arm not currently in Starscream’s hand under his head.
Ratchet’s tried six times in the last three hours to get Starscream to stop moving and lie flat on his back. Still, when he returns to his berth for a fourth time, it’s to Starscream curled up on his side facing Wheeljack with Wheeljack’s hand cradled to his chest. Wheeljack’s asleep, too, bent over the side of the bed. Ratchet sighs. Completely hopeless, both of them.
Regardless of questionable sleeping positions, Starscream’s doing better. His spark beats steadily, if somewhat faintly, and his self-repair is beginning to kick in. He’s a tough piece of work. Some of the scars on his protoform… if Ratchet wasn’t looking right at his vitals, he would think him dead four times over.
Cycle up, cycle down. When you’re overwhelmed, return to your sparkpulse. Follow it up, follow it down. Up, down. Up, down.
Red Alert stood in front of Captain Rodimus’s door, dataslug in hand, rocking back and forth to the time of his sparkpulse. Up, down. Up, down.
After a long moment of this hesitation, he pinged Rodimus for entry.
“Enter if you dare,” Rodimus called from inside. Odd turn of phrase, but then again, Rodimus was an odd mech. It was comforting, in a way. Far too on the nose to be anything but a strange joke.
“Captain,” Red Alert greeted. Rodimus was sprawled sideways across his seat, frame and field. At ease, comfortable, confident. Red Alert remained standing.
“Red Alert! What can I do ya for?”
“What…? Never mind. There is a serious security issue, one I need to bring to your attention. Immediately.”
Rodimus’s demeanor changed all at once. He sat up straight, stiff and alert, field pulled tight to his plating. The expression on his face was… strange. Suspicious? Worried? He gestured to the chair on Red Alert’s side of the desk. “Sit.”
Spark cycling a bit faster, Red Alert sat. He almost placed the dataslug on the table between them, then thought better of it, keeping it clutched close to his chest. Up, down. Up, down. “There’s someone in the basement.”
Part of what Red Alert had always hated about Rodimus was his unpredictability. He smiled and laughed. “What?”
“I said, there’s someone in the basement. Someone very, very bad, and I need you to do something about it.”
Rodimus laughed again, a nervous, stuttering sound. “Red Alert, there’s no one in the basement. Are you feeling alright?”
He didn’t ask what Red Alert meant by there’s someone in the basement. Not exactly a clear statement, and one Red had expected to need to explain. “No, no, I have a recording. Listen to this. I took it in the basement two nights ago, through a crack in the floor.” He pressed play on the audio recording and let the strange sound fill the office.
For forty-five seconds, Red Alert and Rodimus listened in silence. Well, Rodimus listened, and Red Alert observed his body language. Still overly stiff, field still tight to plating, expression completely frozen. If Red Alert had to guess, he’d say he’d frozen his facial plating. Typical of a liar.
Finally, Rodimus spoke. “I don’t hear anything.”
“What?”
“I don’t hear anything on the recording. Red, are you sure you’re feeling okay?”
Rodimus never expressed concern for those not in his inner circle. “What are you talking about? There’s a noise. It’s playing right now, listen.”
“Have you been going to your sessions with Rung? Taking your medication?”
Up, down. Up, down. “I am not crazy.”
“I didn’t say you were! Just that, maybe, you know. You are.” Rodimus laughed again, and this time the nervousness was gone.
“Honestly, Red, I’m worried about you. If you’re hearing things… Do you need some time off?”
I could admit
that I am only a coward
crying me me me
and not mention the little gnats, the moths,
forced by circumstance
to suck on the electric bulb.
It doesn’t hurt, not really. It doesn’t feel like anything he can put a name to, and it feels like a sucking hole drilled in the center of his chest, down through some core of him deeper than physical.
He’s confused, now. Foggy. This is the good part, the best part, after the numbness fades and before the pain sets in, where he can feel the real parts of the pain. Clarity, despite the confusion. He wants to dissolve into it, feel gone like that.
Drift, a voice in his head says. It sounds like Wing. It sounds disappointed. It should. Drift is a disappointment, always and forever. His resting state is something awful. Drift, get up. Get moving. Take your medication.
I don’t want it, he tells Wing. I don’t need it anymore. I never needed it. You needed it for me.
That’s not true. Drift is a narcissist. He knows that.
No one is drugging you, you self-centered bastard.
Despite it all, he wants to smile. He can’t. His face is far too heavy. Everything is heavy, and he feels as if he might sink straight through the berth. Hopefully, out into open space.
He wants to lie down for a long while. It’s stupid. He’s already lying down. He’s been lying down for hours, but he needs… something else.
He knows what he needs. What he wants.
His side hurts. He rolls over onto the other, and pulls his comms out. He messaged Roddy a few hours ago asking if he could come over and keep him company. He hasn’t gotten an answer, and he’s sure Rodimus is out somewhere partying with mechs who hate Drift and—
Roddy: hey
Roddy: sorry, totally missed this earlier
Roddy: you okay???
Roddy: want me to come over now?
Roddy: hey answer me or I’m gonna break into your room
Drift smiles despite himself.
Me: hey
Me: yeah, can you come over now? Just need some company
Roddy: I’ll be right over
Roddy: bringing blankets
Roddy brings a certain… enthusiasm with him to every room. Some days, when it’s already gotten past bad, it’s just annoying. Others, it helps drive the gloom away. Drift’s hoping he’s caught this episode early enough to help. He thinks he has. Already, the thought of Rodimus and his heat and his love pressed up against Drift, queuing up some stupid holovid, telling him to smile before his faceplates froze, helps. It won’t, can’t, fix everything. Drift is pretty sure nothing can fix everything wrong with him. It’s a start, though, and when Rodimus walks in the door five minutes later, Drift smiles and means it.
The snakes will certainly not notice.
New York City will not mind.
At night the bats will beat on the trees,
knowing it all,
seeing what they sensed all day.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Skyfire promises. Gently, he wraps an arm around Starscream and pulls him close, mindful of the injuries that seem to cover the majority of his frame. “I promise you, I’ll stay as long as you want me.” I should never have left you.
Starscream cuddles closer, burying his face in Skyfire’s neck and sighing. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too.” He strokes the back of Starscream’s helm, fingers skating over fresh welds. “Try and get some recharge, okay?”
“Mm-hmm.” Starscream’s field is already going fuzzy. Skyfire lets his own systems cycle down to sleep.
Skyfire falls asleep with one seeker tucked carefully into his side and wakes at the bottom of a pile of three. He blinks and tries to bring a hand up to rub his optics, but one arm’s still around Starscream and Skywarp appears to be cuddling with the other one. They’re still in the back corner of Ratchet’s medbay, in the little space Ratchet had curtained off to give them some semblance of privacy, and Starscream’s still fast asleep wrapped in blankets and bandages. He’s more on top of Skyfire than beside him, now, with his face tucked into the crook of Skyfire’s neck. Thundercracker’s next to him asleep on his stomach with one of Starscream’s wings draped over him. Skywarp’s on Skyfire’s other side, cuddling his arm and frowning in his sleep. His grip on Skyfire’s arm tightens momentarily as if he’s dreaming, and Skyfire wonders if that’s what woke him.
It’s still the middle of the night cycle, just hours after Starscream had finally drifted off to sleep. The weight and the warmth of the three of them is soothing, as is the familiarity of their trust. He’s lulled back into recharge before he can even fully wake up.
When he next comes online, it’s to Ratchet reaching over him to adjust one of the sensors hooked to Starscream.
“Sorry,” Ratchet says, voice low. “Didn’t mean to wake you.” He straightens, raises an eyebrow, and says, “Got some visitors last night, didja?”
“Oh,” Skyfire says, glancing down at his pile of still-sleeping Seekers. It’s morning by the looks of it, but they’ve yet to twitch. “I didn’t—were they not supposed to be here?”
Ratchet grunts. “Must’ve snuck in last night after visiting hours ended. I blame that one.” He gestures to Skywarp. “Doesn’t bother me. You being there helped Starscream calm down enough to stabilize, and these two seem to have the same effect. Besides, they’ve all been dead asleep for almost twelve hours now. They need the rest. You all do.”
Skyfire wants to protest being put in the same category as even Warp and TC who, despite not being nearly as badly injured as Star, are clearly battered and worn down past their breaking points, but the look on Ratchet’s face discourages him. No matter. He’ll stay as long as his presence helps the three of them rest. Besides, he already feels better for the sleep.
Considering the pressure Prowl’d been under recently, it was more a question of when than if he’d crash. Stress triggers his glitch like little else. He’s been feeling the prodromal symptoms for almost a full day, so when he’s hit with rolling tanks and spots of color dancing in front of his vision mid-walk to breakfast, he makes a choice.
He ducks into a small storage closet in a nearby meeting room, empty save for some stacked chairs, and hunkers down for the crash to hit.
He comes around far too quickly, in far too much pain, and with far too many little hands (two) patting his face.
“You and Red choose the same hidey-holes, you know.”
“…What?”
“That’s how we found you! Red has proximity alarms on all his little spots.” Prowl cycles his optics, trying to grasp the situation, and Cerebros seems to take this as his cue to ramble on. “You know, he’s really smart. He has like three different degrees and even though he’s confused a lot of the time—“
“I know. We worked together, remember?” Prowl has seen Red Alert keep pace with Jazz plenty of times, and Jazz is the smartest, most educated mech Prowl’s ever met.
“Oh, right! You know, I forget sometimes that you guys are, you know, you . The Prowl and the Red Alert and the Fort Max. You’re so…”
“Normal?”
“Ah, no. Not even close. Anyways, we found you here after you didn’t show for breakfast and Red Alert got worried.”
“Red Alert worried about me?” Prowl asks, incredulous.
“Red Alert worries about everyone and everything.”
“It’s called an acute anxiety disorder,” Red Alert comments drily as he rounds the corner, joining them in the closet. “Why in the name of Primus did you decide to hide when you realized you were going to crash?”
“I…” Prowl has no good answer for that.
“Never mind. Kind of a pot calling the kettle black situation, isn’t it?” Before Prowl can ask what he means, Red Alert’s pushing Cerebros out of the way and kneeling in front of him. He peers in Prowl’s optics and grabs his wrist, pressing two fingers to Prowl’s pulse point and making a small contemplative sound. “How do you feel?”
“Fine.” Still confused.
Red Alert cocks his helm. “No helm pain? Not feeling like you’re going to have another crash?”
Prowl turns his focus inward. A large crash like that is often followed by a series of smaller aftershocks, and Red Alert knows as much. Still, he doesn’t feel that fuzzy, fragile sense of impending doom that usually heralds another seizure like the one he’d (presumably) just suffered. He shakes his head.
“Good. I’m no medic, and it’s been a long time since my last field certification, but Cerebros can give you a full check up later if you’d like.” Red Alert regards him thoughtfully. “It would be minimally invasive.”
Prowl wants to answer, but before he can, something in his helm goes wrong and he’s gone.
Soundwave contacts him in the middle of the first meeting of the day. Knockout hasn’t even had time to finish his morning cube. ::Knockout. Starscream en route. Prepare medbay.::
Knockout pinches the bridge of his nose. ::For the love of Primus, what did he do this time?::
Before he gets an answer, the door to the medbay slides open and in staggers Soundwave, half-carrying a hysterical Starscream. Starscream’s got one arm around Soundwave’s shoulder and his free hand clutching his crushed neck. Knockout shoots to his feet, racing to support Starscream’s other side. Starscream shrieks and thrashes, almost dislodging him, but Knockout holds fast and manages to wrestle his way under Starscream’s shoulder.
“Primus,” is all Knockout can manage to say. “Primus, what the fuck happened?” He and Soundwave heave Starscream onto the first available medberth. Starscream’s trying to speak, but the only sounds making it through his likely destroyed vocalizer are garbled moans and staticky shrieks. He’s sobbing, optic fluid soaking his face, and when Knockout tries to pry his hand from his neck, the sound he makes can only have been an attempt at a scream.
“Lord Megatron: angered,” Soundwave says.
“No fragging shit,” Knockout snarls. “What did you do?” he demands of Starscream. “Don’t try to answer that.”
Starscream, as always, fails to heed medical advice. More strangled shrieking makes its way past the handprint-shaped crush mark on his neck and when he lashes out as if to try and scratch Knockout with those fucking talons , Knockout sedates him.
Starscream is out in an instant, falling against Soundwave, who lowers him to the berth with surprising gentleness. Despite the visor and mask, Knockout swears the stupid tape deck looks judgemental. Whatever. It’s not the first time Knockout’s had to sedate Starscream post-Megatron encounter, and he’s sure it won’t be the last. Ethical? Perhaps not. Expedient? Certainly. If Knockout were still beholden to an oversight committee, he might even say he’d acted to preserve the safety of both himself and his patient.
Ignoring Soundwave’s look, he sets to work investigating the damage Megatron’s done to Starscream’s vocalizer. It’s extensive, not the sort of thing that could have resulted from a quick grab. This is a major crush injury, something done with the intent to cause extreme damage. Megatron would have felt Starscream’s neck plating crumple under his hands. He would have felt the pop-crunch of his vocalizer giving way. That sort of thing would take commitment, consideration beyond blind rage, even accounting for the difference in Megatron and Starscream’s frame classes.
There’s a dent on the back of Starscream’s helm that speaks to hard contact with a wall.
“I may not be able to repair his vocalizer. Well, he’ll speak again, but as for the quality of his voice…” Soundwave doesn’t answer. Knockout works in silence for a moment longer, soaking up energon and sealing leaking coolant lines, before he can’t bear it anymore. “What happened, Soundwave? What did he do to provoke him?”
“N-n. Soundwave… unsure.”
“Great.”
Red Alert lays on his side on his berth, chewing on his lip, optics half-lit, looking out at his mess of a room. Everything’s been rifled through and then thrown to the side, and there are empty and partially empty energon cubes lying around everywhere. Red Alert thinks about going back to sleep. It would be easier than calling Inferno, or texting him and
Inferno is going to judge him.
Inferno is going to tell everyone.
Everyone already knows. No, that’s stupid, but
Jazz already knows, which means Prowl already knows, which means Optimus already knows, which means, alright, it’s possible everyone already knows he’s a paranoid wreck. After all, he’s called off three shifts in a row, now, too anxious to fathom leaving his quarters. Everyone knows what sort of a crazy glitch he is, and they’re probably all judging him for it. They’re going to take his job away from him.
Yes, better to get some recharge. Maybe, by the time he wakes up, he’ll have snapped out of it.
Please, let him just snap out of it.
He wakes to an alarm going off in his internal systems. Take your medication, it reminds him, and provides him with the doses. He would love to, he thinks groggily, but he can’t manage to get himself out of bed. Everything is so heavy. He imagines sinking straight through the berth. What’s the point of taking his medication when it only helps sometimes? Does it even help? Is it worth the side effects, the judgment?
He falls back to sleep.
Next time he wakes, it’s to his door sliding open. Inferno. He sits bolt upright, scrubbing his hands over his face like he has any hope of hiding hours of crying and uncomfortable recharge.
“Inferno! What are you— Get, get out of my room!”
Inferno stops in the doorway, hands up and expression apologetic. “I knocked and pinged you and you didn’t answer!” Red Alert checks his comms log. He’s telling the truth. Red Alert was too deep in recharge. “I used the override code you gave me, the one for emergencies.” Also not a lie, a check on the security system confirms. “You look awful, Red. It’s been three days since anyone’s seen you.”
“Wow, thanks.”
“You know what I mean. I’ve been worried about you.” Inferno takes a tentative step forward and, when Red Alert doesn’t protest, sits down next to him. “Are you doing alright?”
“What do you think?”
Inferno sighs. “Fair enough.”
“I just… it’s embarrassing, you know? Being like this.”
“No one will judge you.”
Red Alert huffs. “You know that’s not true.”
“No one whose opinion matters will judge you.”
“You also know that’s not true.”
“Damnit, Red, I’m trying to help you,” Inferno snaps.
“Well, lying to me isn’t very helpful!” Red Alert vents heavily and deliberately releases the tension in his frame. “I’m sorry. I’m just…”
“I know.” But Inferno doesn’t know, will never know, refuses to understand, and that’s the problem.
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
You can barely keep your optics online, let alone focus them for long enough to answer Windblade’s question. You’re far, far too overcharged for that. Coherency fled the room a bottle and a half ago, and at this point, it’s all you can do to keep yourself upright. Are you upright? You’re on the couch, at least. That should count for something.
It doesn’t count for anything in Windblade’s book, apparently. “I should take you to the emergency room. You probably have engex poisoning.”
No, no, no, no. That’s no fun. You tell her as much, or something like that, and she tells you she doesn’t want to deal with you like this. You remind her that no one wants to deal with you ever, and she tells you to stop being so miserable. Case in point.
Then, she wants to leave, leave you alone to stew in your misery and your engex, and you can’t have that. You tell her what you’d do if she stayed, how you could reward her for her troubles, and she makes a disgusted face. Typical. Autobots, all prudes. You should have expected as much. She does stay, though. Maybe you’ll both get something out of this by the time the night’s over.
“Why are you drinking, anyway?”
…Because you drink at night?
“Why this much?”
Because you want to. Because Wheeljack doesn’t love you back. Because drinking makes you forget that he doesn’t love you back. Because your head is always full to bursting with things you hate to think about, and your body is covered in memories that come back to you at the worst moments. Because you can, and there is so little that you can do just because you want to.
“That’s… fair, I guess.” Windblade gets a little more comfortable on the couch next to you. You lean over onto her, and she pushes you off. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“You know what.” You do know what. “Why do you do that? You literally just told me you want Wheeljack, not me.”
Is that really the sort of thing she wants to hear about when you’re fifteen shots in? No? Didn’t think so.
“Primus, you’re so fucked up.”
Yeah, you are. You and her could watch a movie together, though. She could have some of your engex. You’ve got plenty left.
“Fine, but I can’t stay long, and I’m not getting too drunk, because I need to keep an eye on you.” Those two statements don’t line up, but you don’t mention it. If she realizes she’s staying, she might not, and you…
You need her to stay tonight.
Slowly, as the engex bottle empties, you both lean towards the center of the couch.
“Don’t give up on Jackie yet,” she slurs when your shoulders touch. “He’s… Just don’t give up on him.”
It hurts.
“I know. I’m sorry.” She lets her head fall on your shoulder. Yours falls on top of hers.