[Fic] Chaos came with a bang, chapter 11
Title:Rating: T
Universe: G1-AU
Pairings: Jazz/Prowl (secret), Ratchet/Wheeljack
Summary: Life in the Ark was often complicated, but things get out of control when Wheeljack and Ratchet are both seriously injured in an accident. Can First Aid save them? Will Sideswipe take on a new career? And in all the chaos will Bumblebee figure out Jazz's biggest secret?
~blah~ is comm-speak ; blah is Cybertronian
Chapter 11: Setbacks and frustrations
Optimus broke the awkward silence that followed Ratchet being put forcibly back offline, his gaze taking in all of the others present.
"Wait here and keep everyone else out. First Aid, come with me."
He led the medic back through to Ratchet's office then shut the door.
"Is Wheeljack right?" he asked quietly.
First Aid shuddered.
"I... I don't know, sir. I don't think so. He shouldn't be in pain, but I really don't know enough about these kinds of injuries..."
Optimus turned back towards the view port to look out at the ward beyond, wondering what would happen next and how his soldiers would cope with this setback.
Everyone was looking forward to good news when Ratchet was brought back online, and the signs had all been so very positive up until now. Positive enough that First Aid had even suggested that his group of helpers were welcome to be present for this first stage.
It had been a slow onlining process, and First Aid had cautioned them over and over that Ratchet would be groggy; most of the medic's systems were manually blocked, so he would be disoriented and perhaps a little incoherent to start with. Wheeljack had stationed himself beside Ratchet's head, holding his hand and calling to him for almost a breem before the first reaction, a slight twitch. Then had come the garbled whistling from his vocaliser which proved he was truly online. First Aid had immediately begun adjusting some of the restrictions to make it easier for the other mech to speak, but the small change had put him offline again for awhile and they had had to start the process over.
Half a breem in, Wheeljack had started complaining in English that it was not working and that he wanted to try something else. Ironhide had tried to reason with him, and First Aid had shyly asked Optimus to take over talking to Ratchet in Cybertronian since his was a voice the medic would probably recognise.
It had been a wonderful moment when Ratchet had finally responded in mangled but still comprehensible tones.
Encouraged by the progress, they had tried to coax more words out of the patient. It had taken time, but Ratchet had begun responding coherently, his words becoming better formed as he went on.
Then it had all gone wrong. Up to that point, Optimus had paid little attention to the small twitches and flinches, but Wheeljack suddenly started demanding that First Aid apply a full body block, that there was too much pain. First Aid argued that it was just natural delayed reaction to the trauma and that the existing blocks were sufficient, but Wheeljack had shoved the acting-CMO aside and put the block in place himself. For a second it appeared to work, then Ratchet became highly agitated and no longer heeded their responses to his increasingly frantic and insistent questions. His words then degenerated into the mindless keening of a distressed sparkling, the sound grating painfully on all their audio receptors until First Aid had put him back offline.
"You did not approve of the additional block." he asked the medic while still staring out into the ward. "Why not?"
First Aid shifted uncomfortably behind him.
"I'm probably wrong, sir. I really don't..."
"I didn't ask you to second-guess yourself. I want to know your reasons."
"Well... Ratchet told me you should never use more blocks than you absolutely need to. Even if it means a bit of pain gets through, it's better than cutting everything off completely because it keeps the patient grounded. And since all pain is actually processed by the CPU, and it was only his head that was actually damaged, there wasn't any point cutting off his senses to the rest of his body."
"Then you had good reason to deny the request." Optimus nodded.
"I guess. But he could be right, too. At least... With all the damage, even with how careful we were with what we reactivated and what we didn't, he's probably feeling phantom pain in his limbs. That's why he keeps flinching even when no-one's touching him. The trauma on its own could be making him feel things that aren't really there. So he could be in pain, in severe pain, it's just that we can't do a lot about it because there's nothing physical to fix..."
"Or to block." Optimus frowned. "So what effect did the block have?"
"I don't really know..."
"What would you guess?"
There was a pause, then the medic responded quietly.
"He panicked. When he realised he wasn't getting any responses from his body, he must've thought it was because he had sustained serious damage. He doesn't know what happened to him, so from his perspective it's possible half his body was blown away, or worse. And because we've turned off his diagnostics, he can't check, but at least he could feel his limbs were there. Once that block was in place, he might've thought..."
Optimus shuttered his optics for a second, all too able to imagine what Ratchet would have thought, then opened them again and turned around to face the miserable medic.
"You've done very good work, First Aid. Truly. What happened here was unfortunate, but we'll learn from this. Remove the block, then we'll try again. I'll speak to Wheeljack."
"I could be wrong, though..."
"I trust you. Trust yourself."
"Yes sir."
Prowl stepped out of his office and down towards his quarters with a steady stride. Most of those not currently on duty were lurking around the rec room waiting for Sideswipe to bring them the news about Ratchet, but Jazz had proclaimed his faith in the outcome and headed to his recharge berth twenty minutes ago. Long enough for him to finally have slowed his systems enough to rest, but not likely enough to see him disturbed from full recharge which made it the perfect moment to interrupt him and have a chat in totally secure surroundings.
It made no sense then, to arrive to find the lights on full with music blaring from the speakers and Jazz hunched over a datapad. Reflexively Prowl cut the output to the speakers, and Jazz looked up belatedly as though he had only just noticed him, which was pure nonsense.
"Oh, is it that time already?" the visored mech asked.
Prowl shook his head, moving straight to his desk and beginning an upload to his datapad.
"No, I just need these files. I thought you'd be in recharge."
"Yeah, well I just can't seem t'settle. Guess I need to hear the good word first after all, huh? Any word yet?"
The computer bleeped as it finished the upload, and Prowl double-checked the content.
"Not so far, but then they expected it to be as much as an hour before we would hear, and it has only been thirty-two minutes. If you're not going to recharge, you should probably go and wait with the others; I'm off-duty soon, and I need to get some reports written so you won't be getting any rest here then."
Jazz sighed dramatically, turning off his datapad and stretching.
"You do have an office for that kind of thing, you know."
"My office is under surveillance, as you well know." Prowl shot back. "Ratchet may currently be incapacitated, but his orders still stand and Red Alert will take far too much pleasure in pointing that out if I am seen to spend too much time in there."
Jazz snorted, clearly enjoying the inventive excuse, and dropped the datapad onto Prowl's desk, carelessly knocking several others out of their neatly placed positions.
"There's that little rebellious streak again, Prowl. I tolja, I'm finally starting to have an effect on you."
"Don't be ridiculous. And don't clutter my desk with your pads."
"I'm not, that's yours now. I just finished sorting out the rest of the roster Prime wanted. You've just got your side to do, and we're done. I'm off to the rec room. See ya."
Taking the time to glare after him, Prowl snatched up the discarded item then carefully re-stacked the rest of his pads neatly before turning on his heel and shutting the door behind him and locking it, unamused by the entire farce.
~So.~ he commented across a private comm line as he headed down the corridor in the opposite direction to his bondmate. ~Was that Mirage in there, or just a camera?~
~Potentially both.~ Jazz sighed. ~He's definitely there, though he's been careful not to move so much as an optic shutter the entire time.~
~Should I bother asking why your staff are spying on you?~
~In-house matter. I'll deal with it.~
~Make sure you do. You need your rest. And we need to talk.~
~Later.~ Jazz agreed. ~We'll figure it out.~
When Optimus had taken First Aid into the office, Ironhide had dragged Wheeljack to the other end of the bay to the small quarantine room and shut the door.
"What in the name of Primus do you think you're doing?" he growled.
Wheeljack glared at him.
"Me? What are you doing? I need to be back out there."
"He's offline - he doesn't need you now. What was all that, arguing with First Aid?"
"Isn't it obvious? He was going to let Ratchet blow his last remaining fuses if he didn't sort out those pain relays!"
Ironhide put his hands on his hips.
"So you said, but then why'd it get worse after you did what you did?"
"It didn't."
"Like pit it didn't. The kid needs your help, Jack, not an argument. He's the medic here."
"He's only a trainee..."
"And you're only an engineer. Slag it all, Jack, there's a difference and even the Cons know that. Most've us can weld a patch or splice a line, but it takes a proper medic to get it all running right. And he is a medic. Sure, he's got plenty to learn, but he's also designed for it. You think he'd let anyone sit there on his repair bed in pain if he could stop it?"
"Then why didn't he?" Wheeljack railed, throwing up his hands.
"I don't know. And neither do you. But what I do know is that things got a pit of a lot worse after you did your little job with the block an' I don't ever wanna see you do that again cause it looked to me like you were the one who was..." He broke off quickly as he heard the door open. "Optimus. What's the word?"
The Prime looked at him, his expression blank.
"Will you excuse us, Hide? I need to talk to Wheeljack. Alone."
"Sure thing."
Closing the door behind himself, Ironhide looked around the bay. Huffer was monitoring the equipment around Ratchet; Hoist was talking softly to Perceptor. First Aid was still out of sight, probably still in the office. His gaze landed on Ratchet and he grimaced. He was not sure when exactly Sideswipe had left, but he thought it had been before it all went wrong. Well that was that, then: the frontliner would just have to stay out permanently now.
Jazz did stop by the rec room long enough to hear the celebrating, but then decided he needed some fresh air. Everything was too restrictive at the moment, and he needed some freedom. Nodding vaguely to a hostile Gears and a miserably silent Bluestreak as he went out - Primus, who had thought to put those two together on gate duty? - he transformed and headed down the road.
So much was happening at the moment. Setting aside the whole emotional aspect there was the fact that their chief medic was potentially slagged. That was not good from a strategic viewpoint. His replacement was inadequately trained and would probably go into fits if he ever got his hands on Ratchet's notes.
On top of that, Prowl had suddenly become fixated on the idea that the Decepticons were up to the most sophisticated plot they had managed in vorns. Their argument in the command centre had started off partly as the normal dissembling to keep others from querying the amount of time they spent together, small as it was, but had devolved into a genuine argument over this supposed 'third target'. Jazz had megavorns of experience as a spy and saboteur, and he could see no evidence of any such thing in the logs they kept of Decepticon transmissions and movements. It did not fit with the pattern of the recent Decepticon attacks, and they had no reason to think that anything had changed. Prowl's outright dismissal of his opinion hurt, and he had been relieved when they were forcibly separated. Neither of them had raised the issue since.
He had hoped to talk it out with Prowl after his recharge, but when he arrived in his room he had immediately realised that he was not alone. Which meant the act had to continue. It also meant he could not afford to go into recharge either; he simply wouldn't be able to charge with someone else in the room. As he could have predicted, Prowl found an excuse to 'interrupt' his recharge, but rather than clearing things up they had ended up having to continue playing the game.
At least Prowl had immediately picked up on something being wrong and acted appropriately, or they could be in an even bigger mess than they already were.
Why, Jazz wondered angrily as he increased his speed. Why was Mirage spying on him? Yes, he knew his specialists were annoyed about Prime's orders, but how did that translate into him being targeted? Usually Mirage would go and sulk, and Bumblebee would search out the company of his friends. It was definitely Mirage, today, but this scenario was purely Bumblebee; he would stake his energon ration on it. He knew the little scout was upset by the disruption to his schedules, but why was he taking it so hard and how had he managed to convince Mirage to help him with it? This was just a short term inconvenience, did it really make that much of a difference? And why would they stoop to something so petty? Unless they suspected something. But what?
The problem was not so much that he had no idea; the problem was that there were too many options, and most of them led back to the basic problem of him and Prowl. Had they figured it out? Not the bonding, no they would not have gotten that far without him knowing, but even just a suspicion that he and Prowl were lovers had its risks because it could lead to them being targetted even more by the enemy.
Or was he overreacting and were they just trying to 'protect' him, angry at Prowl's outburst earlier? That sort of thing had happened before.
He smiled to himself, remembering previous attempts by others to 'save' him from the 'sparkless' tactician. Playing the martyr had always been fun. His smile dropped away as he sensed a jet approaching and he began to cycle up his weapons system, then he realised it was Silverbolt.
~Hiya. How're the skies today?~
~Clear. Where are you going?~
~Just out for a stretch, it was gettin' tough wit' everyone cooped up in there.~
There was a pause.
~You know Prime has set a boundary. I can't let you cross it without reporting it to him.~
Jazz slowed, dismayed. It had never occurred to him that the restriction affected him too. Usually Prime's officers were exempt from such things, though they were expected to lead by example wherever possible. Dredging up some good humour that he was no longer feeling, he responded casually.
~Sure, I know that. I'm just goin' as far as the ridge, then I'll follow it along to the gully and head back.~
~Of course.~ Silverbolt responded, clearly relieved. ~Mind if I tag along?~
~Not at all.~ Jazz lied.
Of course, it was not the Aerialbot's fault. His team had been ordered to monitor every bot who left the Ark. Jazz wondered bitterly if the restriction applied to Optimus himself.
~We've already had a bit of trouble with some others.~ Silverbolt confessed. ~Including one of your team, actually.~
~Really? Who? Mirage?~
~No, Hound. He and Beachcomber keep sneaking over to that organic growth area Carly was working on.~
~I'll have a word to him, he won't do it again.~
~I'd appreciate it.~
He drove on a bit further, then turned onto the side path to keep to his stated itinerary.
~Have you heard the word 'bout the Hatchet?~ he asked.
~Not yet. There's been news?~
~Sideswipe says he's back online an' talkin'. Not shoutin' yet, but that'll probably come next.~
The jet swooped to his right abruptly as Silverbolt checked out something further away, then drifted back towards him.
~I didn't see the injury, but I heard there was damage to his CPU. It can't have been so bad, then. Mechs always exaggerate.~
~Yeah.~ Jazz agreed vaguely, knowing it was important to keep morale up, and that the Aerialbots were really too young to truly grasp the implications of what was going on. ~Sounds like he'll be just fine.~
~Good.~
Prime pinged him and he accepted the call.
~Jazz. My office. Now.~
~On my way.~
Cutting that line, he finished his call with Silverbolt.
~Sorry, Bolt, I gotta dash. Prime wants me.~
~Fair enough. Thanks for letting me know about Ratchet.~
The Aerialbot signed off and increased his altitude, but Jazz knew he was being followed all the way back to the Ark. It was just the way the flier was.