DVD MEME: Aftermath Part One
The pain came with the shocking, sudden realization that it existed at all; one moment, there had been nothing but a calm emptiness that had been fully embraced. The next, there had been pain. No stages in between, no time to try and figure out what was going on; only the fact that he now hurt and nothing else.
At this point, I realized that barely-conscious people didn’t necessarily need to make sense. It’s all sensation, so I tried to make that the focus.
It enveloped everything. He could barely think past it all, couldn’t collect his thoughts beyond the confusion and agony. His own mind felt scattered, scrambling against it all, lost in an abyss of darkness.
What had happened? Where was he? Why did everything hurt? Why wouldn’t it stop?!
A loud, beating drum echoed above the pain. A horrid thump-thump that made focus practically impossible to obtain. He wished that it would stop pouding, that it would slow down, that it would do something to make it better. He tried to scream. He didn’t know if he did.
I apparently fail at such descriptions, though. That ‘thump-thump’ was SUPPOSED to be his fuel punp, much like a heart, that he could hear far too acutely in his not-quite-awake state. Blah.
Everything was so dark.
He couldn’t see. Everything hurt and he couldn’t see. There was nothing but pain, baffled, enigmatic pain, surrounded by a strange haze.
Often, my brain will give me words even though I don’t entirely know the meaning. I had to look up what ‘enigmatic’ meant even though my brain insisted it was the correct word.
From what seemed like very far away, there were noises. Muffled, as if walls separated himself from their source and almost drowned out by the echo their very existence created. He tried to focus on them, tried to figure out if they had anything to do with what was happening now.
It took some time to realize that they were voices. They were nearly impossible to understand, but they were voices.
What was going on?
The voices were distorted, as if a badly made recording had been played backwards and altered. A single sentence spoke itself at a slowed down tone, pitch changing dramatically, only to speed up without warning to the point of impossibility. He couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t understand most of the words at all.
I imagined that bit as if a recording had been played backwards and randomly slowed down and sped up, with random record-like skipping. For some reason, I find those sorts of noises really, really disturbing. And I figured a sedated mecha might hear things in a similar manner when drugged up to this point.
“What happened?!” That, however, he managed to make sense of.
“What, this shouldn’t -“ The pitch shifted again, the speed changing up as it did and words were lost. “Hold him down!”
A strange pressure overcame him. Frightened, confused and agony still coursing through him, he tried to fight back.
“ -- Even be awake!” The words sent a thunderous clap of pain through him. “Pit spawn - “ A torrent of garbled sound. “Sensors been heightened! Hold him!”
The only reason Cliffjumper was awake at all was because of Soundwave screwing with his sensors. In case that wasn’t obvious. XD;
The pain began to ebb. Desperately, he clung to it, hoping it would keep on going, hoping the pain would all go away.
“It’s okay. Ssh.” The hushing sent a wave of terror through him; it was familiar in all the wrong ways. “It’s all right.”
And even not really awake, Cliffjumper remembers! Dun dun duuuun!
As the agony dispersed, exhaustion loomed. A darkness very much unlike his current blindness came at him with the promise of a long, deep sleep. It was welcomed; anything to make it all stop.
“Cliffjumper it - be okay. It’s going to -“
Then, everything was gone.
To be honest, I have no idea what the point of that entire sequence was. I think my brain intended to use it as some sort of trauma base for the medical staff, but I honestly can’t remember. xD
----------
Once their patent had stopped moving, all that they could do was stare in shock.
Though, okay, fine, this scene DID have some minor medical trauma.
Had there been anyone watching it all, they might have been able to forgive First Aid and Swoop for their pause. Both junior medics stared at the unmoving blue frame on the berth with wide optics and horrified shock. However, both were still fairly new to their profession; they had yet to see the full scale of what their jobs entailed.
However, Ratchet’s surprise might have been a cause for concern. For several seconds, the Autobot’s CMO openly gaped at the now comatose minibot.
Even Ratchet is going, “WHAT THE F..” and starting to realize that, for once, he may be a little bit over his head. He might be CMO, but every doctor has things they just have never dealt with before. I mentioned it in a recent chapter, but not all doctors can do all things; I figured Ratchet would be no different.
He had been screaming. Cliffjumper hadn’t even been conscious, and he had been screaming.
“Primus..” First Aid breathed as he let go of the body. He took several steps back, limbs shaking ever so slightly. “We.. That was from a basic scan. Ratchet, we - “
“I know.” Ratchet frowned deeply. A deep intake was taken. “Swoop?”