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Behold fine people of the comm, I bring you torture-less and mostly angst-free ficcage! No joke!
Title: Cybernetics (chapter 15)
Rating: G (it will go back up soon)
Pairing: Ironhide/Ratchet Barricade/OC
Summary: Sometimes purgatory is worse than hell
Warnings: None this chapter.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for my OC...although, if Hasbro wants to buy her they most certainly can. I need money for a plane ticket to Japan. Oh God, that rhymed...
Chapter 15: Home
A/N: Well, it seems that along with his G1 paintjob Ratchet has managed to retrieve his G1 personality. I don’t know what the hell happened here. Oh well. Say hi to 80’s Ratch everyone! I’m sure he’ll gtfo soon...that, or ‘Hide will pick up that Southern accent...and the ability to fly...[/bad G1 humor] Sorry this chapter is...I don't know. I don't like Bumblebee. I think I messed him up somehow...
“How is she?” Ironhide asked softly, surprising the medic with his stealth when he came up from behind and wrapped his arms around the white and red mech.
“Her vocal chords are shot. It’s almost worse than what happened to Bumblebee; at least I could try and repair that. With these I just have to wait for them to heal on their own.
“Her ribs have been set but...I don’t know if they’ll heal right. The humans tell me if they don’t they’ll have to break them again purposefully so that they can try again. I’m tempted to crack open her chest and simply weld them back together myself. Some metal plate infusion would do it nicely, and it’s not like the left half of her ribcage isn’t metallic already.
“Otherwise, she’s exhausted both mentally and physically. As soon as we got back to base she refused to even try communicating with anyone. She won’t tell us what happened or if she gave them any information...when she’s awake she just stares into space. Sometimes she’ll cry for a while or curl up on my work bench but she doesn’t like anyone else touching her and she won’t eat. I keep having to pump her full of pre-processed energon.”
Ratchet let out a sigh and shook his head. Ironhide turned him so they were facing each other and pulled him close.
“She’s strong for a human. I saw her stand up to Starscream, swear she’d never tell him anything.” Ironhide recalled, stroking his partner’s arm slowly in a comforting gesture. “She’ll pull through. Give it time.”
“You’re lecturing me on patience? Primus help us all...” Ratchet teased. Ironhide merely grunted in response. The medic leaned his head against the larger mech’s chest and asked, “How goes the interrogation?”
Ironhide growled. “I say we just scrap the little hellion. He says nothing. We ask what he knows, what the Decepticons' plans are and all he ever replies is that he is loyal to Lord Megatron and will not betray his memory by telling us anything. Little slagger has the nerve to smile and laugh while he says it to...”
“Loyal to Megatron?” Ratchet frowned. “But Megatron is dead. Decepticons follow those who are strongest. Surely they would not wish to preserve the memory of one who was out-witted by an organic significantly more primitive and unintelligent.”
“We can’t sort it out either. ‘Jack is convinced he’s gone ‘round the bend’ as the humans say.”
“Have you tried asking him why he is loyal to Megatron and not Starscream?” Ratchet suggested, lifting his head to look into Ironhide’s optics.
“Hadn’t thought of that.” The larger of the two nodded. He then shook his head. “Probably wouldn’t matter. I’ve always thought that Barricade had a few too many screws loose.”
Ratchet shook his head. “Barricade is brilliant. If I’m remembering correctly, he had top marks in every class at the academy back in the day. Every class but mine that is. He said it bored him to death. Any way about it, he is probably trying to provoke you.”
“Hmph. Top marks in his classes, but he still insisted on racing...is that why you liked him?” Ironhide asked, curious now.
“No. I liked him because he kept Bumblebee away from the twins and out of my med bay.” Ratchet chuckled. “He would have been such an asset to our forces. What a waste.” He shook his head.
“Speaking of wasting, you haven’t consumed anything in days. It is very...I worry.” Ironhide confessed.
“I know, but it's not like I'm wasting away...I don’t want to leave her.” Ratchet turned his head to eye her sleeping form.
“There are too many others who depend on you for you to stop taking care of yourself over one organic.”
“I guess you’re right. I’m sorry ‘Hide. It’s just...it’s my fault this happened at all. I should have taken better care of her then, but I didn’t, so I’m taking very good care of her now.”
“You say she won’t answer questions or respond at all?” Ironhide inquired.
“No.” Ratchet sighed.
“Maybe she needs to be alone instead of having you fuss all over her.” He suggested cautiously. It was never a good idea to question the CMO’s bedside manner.
“Maybe she needs to never be alone. We won’t know until she tells us.”
The two mechs stood in silence, watching the human female sleep fitfully.
“Will you recharge more efficiently if she is brought into our quarters?” Ironhide asked, pulling away from his partner.
“Yes.” Ratchet nodded.
“Then I’ll let you move her in...but only if you come grab some energon with me and take your mind off work for a little while.”
Ratchet seemed to consider this for a moment, looking from his lover to where Natalie lay. After a minute had passed he turned to Ironhide and smiled. “Do you remember when you used to take me to that energon bar when we were younger?”
“Yes.” Ironhide smiled back, wrapping an arm around the other’s shoulders. “But in those days I never got to take you back to my berth at the end of the night.”
“This is true.” He said as he was lead away, only glancing back once at where Natalie as sleeping.
Pretending to be asleep more like. As soon as they were gone she opened her eyes and cleared her throat, wincing at the pain this produced. Carefully, she reached up for her glass of water and took a tentative sip. The liquid sent a searing pain through her throat, causing her to cough violently which in turn caused yet more pain.
A hand on her shoulder caused her to jump. She threw her glass at the offender and scrambled backwards. Both of them groaned in pain, she because she’d twisted wrong trying to get away, and he because he’d been hit in the chest with a glass projectile.
“Hey, I’m not going to hurt you.” He told her, holding up his hands in surrender and smiling slightly through the pain that still lingered in his chest where he’d been hit. The blond hair that hung in front of his piercing blue eyes was dripping slowly from the water that had been spilt from the glass, making the sweet smile on his face all the cuter. This guy breathed trustworthiness.
Hmph. So did Barricade. She thought bitterly.
“I’m Bumblebee. We met before.” He told her, bending to pick up the glass, which somehow hadn't broken when it fell.
Bumblebee? Oh yeah, right. The bright yellow one.
Natalie didn’t respond. She did, however, focus her eyes on him which was a lot more than she’d done for anyone recently.
“I heard Ratchet made you take a vow of silence until your vocal chords heal. Well, actually, I read that snooping through your file in the Autobot Personnel Archive...” He looked down at the ground and shuffled his feet as though feeling guilty, but his smile ruined it. “Look, I know you’re not supposed to be getting visitors just yet, but I wanted to give you something.”
Natalie was intrigued, but still felt listless. It was like her entire existence had been rendered pointless by two months of sheer hell. She was surrounded by people who cared about her, but she couldn’t bring herself to care back.
She turned her head away from her visitor and stared at the ceiling.
Pulling up a chair he sat down beside her and sighed, the smile disappearing from his gentle face. “For a long time I was mute. Actually, if it weren’t for an out-of-the-blue miracle I don’t think I’d ever have gotten my voice back. It still comes and goes a little every now and then.” Bumblebee rubbed his throat absently as though just thinking about it made it hurt. “I’ve also been tortured before too and...I know. Just...Primus, this is hard.”
Natalie didn’t look at him, but she did begin listening more intently; it sounded like this hologram was pouring his proverbial heart and soul into his words.
“Afterward they, Optimus and the others I mean, tried to get me to tell them what happened...what they did to me...” He shuddered. “I didn’t want to talk about it. I’d gotten my voice back after millennia of silence, but I didn’t want to talk at all. About anything. All that I wanted was to park somewhere and stay there. But after a few days I started to feel like I would explode if I didn’t tell someone what I was thinking and feeling, if I didn’t just get on the nearest stretch of empty straight-away and drive as fast as I could. After a while your thoughts eat away at you and you’ll do anything to get them out.”
Bumblebee held out to her a small black square she hadn't noticed before. She looked at it for a moment, frowning before he explained.
“It’s a portable HD satellite AM/FM radio. I know it’s kinda old tech but it’ll serve you well. You can use your comm. channel to scan the radio frequencies (any audio frequencies, actually) and find what the words you don’t have. Then you just focus them through these speakers here and suddenly you have a voice again.” He smiled a little. “I know you don’t want to talk now, but when you’re ready to explode it’ll be here.”
Bumblebee set the object down on the table beside her bed tenderly.
Natalie drew in a ragged breath and blinked a couple times to try and keep back her tears.
He didn’t understand how she felt, couldn’t possibly. Not when Barricade, the mech that tortured and punished her in the most brutal way, was locked up in the brig approximately 300 yards below her current location. She had snorted at the irony of it when she overheard Ratchet discuss this with Optimus. Apparently Starscream had been too cunning for them (which she herself couldn’t possibly fathom) and created a distraction in which he and all his little friends had managed to escape. All of them except Barricade, who was still too disoriented to tell his head from his aft when they brought him in. Disoriented because he had screwed up all his sensory preceptors when he’d taken a hit from a plasma cannon to protect her just after attempting to rape her for information.
Irony, irony, irony.
What was worse, she could feel him close to her and that made her hurt all the worse. When it got really bad she would stumble out of her bed over to Ratchet, who never chastised her for getting up even though he should have. He would hold her close in his mech or holo form, whatever he was in at the time, and just hold her there. Sometimes he kissed her forehead lightly or rubbed her back. It numbed the pain a little...but just a little.
She was getting better though. Here she was crying gratuitous tears. An emotion other than hopelessness or deep depression. That was good.
Bumblebee grabbed a tissue from the box beside her bed and handed it to her. She dabbed her eyes with it as he touched her shoulder in a comforting gesture as if to wordlessly say, “I’m here for you.” because he understood she didn’t want to hear him say it the same way everyone had been saying it the last three days.
He stepped back and let his hologram disappear. Behind her the Camaro rose up and turned to leave without another word.
With that she was alone and Natalie quickly dried her tears. She picked up the radio and fiddled with it briefly, longing for some kind of sound to mirror her mood and break the heavy silence created by Ratchet’s absence.
Eventually she settled on a station and set the radio back down on her bedside, letting the gentle but somber melody ease her into dreamless sleep.
Come home
It's something less than a holiday
When you come home
It's something less than a holiday
They'll be sneaking up behind you again
A/N: The short lyrics were from Great Northern’s “Home,” a song I hear on the radio a lot. It’s the kind of song you listen to when you’re staring out the window on a sad, rainy day...if that makes any sense.
Anyways, yes, as I told artemischan: "Nat + BB = BFF<333"
They’re going to get to be good friends. ^^ And of course, that means we’ll get Sam in here eventually too...eventually. Barricade next chapter!
Title: Cybernetics (chapter 15)
Rating: G (it will go back up soon)
Pairing: Ironhide/Ratchet Barricade/OC
Summary: Sometimes purgatory is worse than hell
Warnings: None this chapter.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for my OC...although, if Hasbro wants to buy her they most certainly can. I need money for a plane ticket to Japan. Oh God, that rhymed...
Chapter 15: Home
A/N: Well, it seems that along with his G1 paintjob Ratchet has managed to retrieve his G1 personality. I don’t know what the hell happened here. Oh well. Say hi to 80’s Ratch everyone! I’m sure he’ll gtfo soon...that, or ‘Hide will pick up that Southern accent...and the ability to fly...[/bad G1 humor] Sorry this chapter is...I don't know. I don't like Bumblebee. I think I messed him up somehow...
“How is she?” Ironhide asked softly, surprising the medic with his stealth when he came up from behind and wrapped his arms around the white and red mech.
“Her vocal chords are shot. It’s almost worse than what happened to Bumblebee; at least I could try and repair that. With these I just have to wait for them to heal on their own.
“Her ribs have been set but...I don’t know if they’ll heal right. The humans tell me if they don’t they’ll have to break them again purposefully so that they can try again. I’m tempted to crack open her chest and simply weld them back together myself. Some metal plate infusion would do it nicely, and it’s not like the left half of her ribcage isn’t metallic already.
“Otherwise, she’s exhausted both mentally and physically. As soon as we got back to base she refused to even try communicating with anyone. She won’t tell us what happened or if she gave them any information...when she’s awake she just stares into space. Sometimes she’ll cry for a while or curl up on my work bench but she doesn’t like anyone else touching her and she won’t eat. I keep having to pump her full of pre-processed energon.”
Ratchet let out a sigh and shook his head. Ironhide turned him so they were facing each other and pulled him close.
“She’s strong for a human. I saw her stand up to Starscream, swear she’d never tell him anything.” Ironhide recalled, stroking his partner’s arm slowly in a comforting gesture. “She’ll pull through. Give it time.”
“You’re lecturing me on patience? Primus help us all...” Ratchet teased. Ironhide merely grunted in response. The medic leaned his head against the larger mech’s chest and asked, “How goes the interrogation?”
Ironhide growled. “I say we just scrap the little hellion. He says nothing. We ask what he knows, what the Decepticons' plans are and all he ever replies is that he is loyal to Lord Megatron and will not betray his memory by telling us anything. Little slagger has the nerve to smile and laugh while he says it to...”
“Loyal to Megatron?” Ratchet frowned. “But Megatron is dead. Decepticons follow those who are strongest. Surely they would not wish to preserve the memory of one who was out-witted by an organic significantly more primitive and unintelligent.”
“We can’t sort it out either. ‘Jack is convinced he’s gone ‘round the bend’ as the humans say.”
“Have you tried asking him why he is loyal to Megatron and not Starscream?” Ratchet suggested, lifting his head to look into Ironhide’s optics.
“Hadn’t thought of that.” The larger of the two nodded. He then shook his head. “Probably wouldn’t matter. I’ve always thought that Barricade had a few too many screws loose.”
Ratchet shook his head. “Barricade is brilliant. If I’m remembering correctly, he had top marks in every class at the academy back in the day. Every class but mine that is. He said it bored him to death. Any way about it, he is probably trying to provoke you.”
“Hmph. Top marks in his classes, but he still insisted on racing...is that why you liked him?” Ironhide asked, curious now.
“No. I liked him because he kept Bumblebee away from the twins and out of my med bay.” Ratchet chuckled. “He would have been such an asset to our forces. What a waste.” He shook his head.
“Speaking of wasting, you haven’t consumed anything in days. It is very...I worry.” Ironhide confessed.
“I know, but it's not like I'm wasting away...I don’t want to leave her.” Ratchet turned his head to eye her sleeping form.
“There are too many others who depend on you for you to stop taking care of yourself over one organic.”
“I guess you’re right. I’m sorry ‘Hide. It’s just...it’s my fault this happened at all. I should have taken better care of her then, but I didn’t, so I’m taking very good care of her now.”
“You say she won’t answer questions or respond at all?” Ironhide inquired.
“No.” Ratchet sighed.
“Maybe she needs to be alone instead of having you fuss all over her.” He suggested cautiously. It was never a good idea to question the CMO’s bedside manner.
“Maybe she needs to never be alone. We won’t know until she tells us.”
The two mechs stood in silence, watching the human female sleep fitfully.
“Will you recharge more efficiently if she is brought into our quarters?” Ironhide asked, pulling away from his partner.
“Yes.” Ratchet nodded.
“Then I’ll let you move her in...but only if you come grab some energon with me and take your mind off work for a little while.”
Ratchet seemed to consider this for a moment, looking from his lover to where Natalie lay. After a minute had passed he turned to Ironhide and smiled. “Do you remember when you used to take me to that energon bar when we were younger?”
“Yes.” Ironhide smiled back, wrapping an arm around the other’s shoulders. “But in those days I never got to take you back to my berth at the end of the night.”
“This is true.” He said as he was lead away, only glancing back once at where Natalie as sleeping.
Pretending to be asleep more like. As soon as they were gone she opened her eyes and cleared her throat, wincing at the pain this produced. Carefully, she reached up for her glass of water and took a tentative sip. The liquid sent a searing pain through her throat, causing her to cough violently which in turn caused yet more pain.
A hand on her shoulder caused her to jump. She threw her glass at the offender and scrambled backwards. Both of them groaned in pain, she because she’d twisted wrong trying to get away, and he because he’d been hit in the chest with a glass projectile.
“Hey, I’m not going to hurt you.” He told her, holding up his hands in surrender and smiling slightly through the pain that still lingered in his chest where he’d been hit. The blond hair that hung in front of his piercing blue eyes was dripping slowly from the water that had been spilt from the glass, making the sweet smile on his face all the cuter. This guy breathed trustworthiness.
Hmph. So did Barricade. She thought bitterly.
“I’m Bumblebee. We met before.” He told her, bending to pick up the glass, which somehow hadn't broken when it fell.
Bumblebee? Oh yeah, right. The bright yellow one.
Natalie didn’t respond. She did, however, focus her eyes on him which was a lot more than she’d done for anyone recently.
“I heard Ratchet made you take a vow of silence until your vocal chords heal. Well, actually, I read that snooping through your file in the Autobot Personnel Archive...” He looked down at the ground and shuffled his feet as though feeling guilty, but his smile ruined it. “Look, I know you’re not supposed to be getting visitors just yet, but I wanted to give you something.”
Natalie was intrigued, but still felt listless. It was like her entire existence had been rendered pointless by two months of sheer hell. She was surrounded by people who cared about her, but she couldn’t bring herself to care back.
She turned her head away from her visitor and stared at the ceiling.
Pulling up a chair he sat down beside her and sighed, the smile disappearing from his gentle face. “For a long time I was mute. Actually, if it weren’t for an out-of-the-blue miracle I don’t think I’d ever have gotten my voice back. It still comes and goes a little every now and then.” Bumblebee rubbed his throat absently as though just thinking about it made it hurt. “I’ve also been tortured before too and...I know. Just...Primus, this is hard.”
Natalie didn’t look at him, but she did begin listening more intently; it sounded like this hologram was pouring his proverbial heart and soul into his words.
“Afterward they, Optimus and the others I mean, tried to get me to tell them what happened...what they did to me...” He shuddered. “I didn’t want to talk about it. I’d gotten my voice back after millennia of silence, but I didn’t want to talk at all. About anything. All that I wanted was to park somewhere and stay there. But after a few days I started to feel like I would explode if I didn’t tell someone what I was thinking and feeling, if I didn’t just get on the nearest stretch of empty straight-away and drive as fast as I could. After a while your thoughts eat away at you and you’ll do anything to get them out.”
Bumblebee held out to her a small black square she hadn't noticed before. She looked at it for a moment, frowning before he explained.
“It’s a portable HD satellite AM/FM radio. I know it’s kinda old tech but it’ll serve you well. You can use your comm. channel to scan the radio frequencies (any audio frequencies, actually) and find what the words you don’t have. Then you just focus them through these speakers here and suddenly you have a voice again.” He smiled a little. “I know you don’t want to talk now, but when you’re ready to explode it’ll be here.”
Bumblebee set the object down on the table beside her bed tenderly.
Natalie drew in a ragged breath and blinked a couple times to try and keep back her tears.
He didn’t understand how she felt, couldn’t possibly. Not when Barricade, the mech that tortured and punished her in the most brutal way, was locked up in the brig approximately 300 yards below her current location. She had snorted at the irony of it when she overheard Ratchet discuss this with Optimus. Apparently Starscream had been too cunning for them (which she herself couldn’t possibly fathom) and created a distraction in which he and all his little friends had managed to escape. All of them except Barricade, who was still too disoriented to tell his head from his aft when they brought him in. Disoriented because he had screwed up all his sensory preceptors when he’d taken a hit from a plasma cannon to protect her just after attempting to rape her for information.
Irony, irony, irony.
What was worse, she could feel him close to her and that made her hurt all the worse. When it got really bad she would stumble out of her bed over to Ratchet, who never chastised her for getting up even though he should have. He would hold her close in his mech or holo form, whatever he was in at the time, and just hold her there. Sometimes he kissed her forehead lightly or rubbed her back. It numbed the pain a little...but just a little.
She was getting better though. Here she was crying gratuitous tears. An emotion other than hopelessness or deep depression. That was good.
Bumblebee grabbed a tissue from the box beside her bed and handed it to her. She dabbed her eyes with it as he touched her shoulder in a comforting gesture as if to wordlessly say, “I’m here for you.” because he understood she didn’t want to hear him say it the same way everyone had been saying it the last three days.
He stepped back and let his hologram disappear. Behind her the Camaro rose up and turned to leave without another word.
With that she was alone and Natalie quickly dried her tears. She picked up the radio and fiddled with it briefly, longing for some kind of sound to mirror her mood and break the heavy silence created by Ratchet’s absence.
Eventually she settled on a station and set the radio back down on her bedside, letting the gentle but somber melody ease her into dreamless sleep.
Come home
It's something less than a holiday
When you come home
It's something less than a holiday
They'll be sneaking up behind you again
A/N: The short lyrics were from Great Northern’s “Home,” a song I hear on the radio a lot. It’s the kind of song you listen to when you’re staring out the window on a sad, rainy day...if that makes any sense.
Anyways, yes, as I told artemischan: "Nat + BB = BFF<333"
They’re going to get to be good friends. ^^ And of course, that means we’ll get Sam in here eventually too...eventually. Barricade next chapter!