Saturday Night Fic - Still Waters, Chapter 1
So so much for having any writing time this week! Second wave of wildlife (including a groundhog who just needed a few days to recover and five tiny possumlets), Perseid program, big volunteer appreciation party, boss on vacation so I got to wrangle several contracts and dilemmas, departing volunteer coordinator so I got to take over lots of her duties, too, whew! So pulling out my pinch hitter fic, so sorry. Exploration of alien robot spawning methods will have to wait a bit longer ^^
This is the fic I started writing way back in...2008? Of all-by-himself sadsverse First Aid, except then I wanted to do a little background piece on his brothers and it turned into Protectobot Beginnings and consumed my brain for the next several years, lol. My main frustration has been trying to retrofit everything, since my headcanon for the Protectobots and the Twins and other characters has changed and evolved over the years, so some of the characterizations may seem a little inconsistent.
Title: Still Waters (1/?)
Characters: Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, First Aid, Ratchet
Universe: Protectobot Beginnings AU
Rating: K+
Word Count: 2697
Warnings: fairly graphic description of injury, bit of a cliffhanger chapter
Summary: Sideswipe discovers there may be more to First Aid than meets the eye.
“Sideswipe.”
The name - his name - was all that was holding him steady for the moment. The world was tilting, spinning; he wanted to grab something to make it stop only he couldn’t seem to find his hands.
“Sideswipe?”
Again, that quiet voice. He had to work to hear it, through the roar that filled his audios. Focus. There. Not far away. Not enemy. Don’t shoot this one, he thought, and simultaneously, with a thrill of horror, realized that he couldn’t shoot anyway. Weapons status: offline. Bad bad bad - he was so slaggin’ toast…
“Sideswipe, you’re ok. You’re in the medbay.”
Medbay. No wrestling or shouting allowed in the medbay…was he in trouble? Where was…the other one…yellow… Panic set in. Everything was too bright, he couldn’t see. His spark groped blindly and frantically for its other half. Where! Where was….
“Sunstreaker is right here. He’ll be fine. Can you hear me?”
Sunstreaker. The air left his vents in a gasping sob of relief. Near. He could feel his brother now, presence faint but undeniable. Another anchor to put the world back in its place. Pain was growing as well, but he welcomed it. It mapped out his body, giving it shape again. He had hands; they were gripping something tight enough to make his joints ache.
Sideswipe clenched his jaw as his head gave a sharp throb, but as it did so the blur of light and color in front of him suddenly focused. The helm in front of him was red and white, not yellow. He was close enough to see bright blue optics behind the visor, calm and steady and watching him intently.
He knew who this was, but it took awhile for the name to come. “Aid?” he managed finally.
“Yep,” was the cheerful, if somewhat breathless reply. “Back with us?”
“You got him, Aid?” Another voice…who?...Ratchet. That was Ratchet’s voice, from somewhere not too far away.
“More like he’s got me.” The last word was more a cough than spoken, but the optics in front of Sideswipe crinkled into a slight smile.
“Here, let me give you a hand, kid.” Ironhide. Sideswipe was relieved as his processor identified the familiar voice with no delays. First Aid’s optic ridges drew together in a small, puzzled frown as Sideswipe felt strong arms lifting him from behind.
“Just hold still a klik….” Ironhide grunted as he pulled the damaged frontliner up, and only then did Sideswipe realize he’d been pinning First Aid to the floor. Sideswipe bit back a yelp of pain as he briefly tried to put weight on his right leg, but then Ironhide lifted again. It was an effort to do so with his battle protocols still clamoring at him, but Sideswipe forced himself go limp and relax as the burly weapon’s master rolled him neatly onto a nearby berth, pushing a toppled energon transfusion unit out of the way as he did so. Sideswipe felt a short twinge as Ironhide pulled out the torn energon transfusion line sticking out from his arm. The weapons master moved stiffly, and Sideswipe could see the dried energon from a roughly patched injury on his side.
“I’ll let First Aid put in a new one for ya,” Ironhide said gruffly, as he tried to get the energon transfusion unit upright again. “He’ll do a prettier job of it.”
Sideswipe turned his head and felt his battle protocols gear down a few more notches as he saw the familiar yellow form of his brother, on the repair berth next to him. Ah yes. The stopover for supplies at Karkas III had turned into an ambush. There had been a battle, and now they were back on the Ark in the medbay. Things were making more sense now. Sunstreaker was offline, looking rather scorched around the edges, but he appeared to be otherwise intact.
Ironhide followed his glance. “Don’t you worry about Sunny now,” he said, patting Sideswipe’s shoulder reassuringly. “He took a couple of nasty jolts from those Karkan electro-grenades, but he’ll wake up his usual jolly self, especially once he gets a good look at his paint job.”
Ratchet looked up briefly from the prone form he was tending at the other end of the medbay, scanning the room in a quick assessment of the injured mechs before turning back to his current patient. “First Aid, what are you doing over there, taking a recharge nap?” he snapped irritably.
Sideswipe watched as Ironhide turned to look behind him on the floor next to his berth, and then blinked as the red mech dropped abruptly out of sight.
“Ratchet! Over here NOW!” At the panicked bellow from Ironhide, Sideswipe struggled to sit up, but had to settle for curling painfully on his side to peer over the edge of his berth. What he saw nearly stopped his spark cold. First Aid lay still on the floor, visor dark, as Ironhide hovered over him frantically. Sideswipe stared as Aid’s body arched in a weak convulsion, his engine revving and then faltering with an awful gurgling sound.
Things had stopped making sense again. His dazed CPU still struggling to explain what he was seeing, Sideswipe watched numbly as Ratchet skidded abruptly around the corner of his berth. Ratchet took one look at the stricken junior medic and dropped to his knees beside him, letting loose a string of processor-blistering oaths.
“Ratchet, we need to get him on a berth…” Ironhide began.
“Slaggit, ‘Hide, there’s no time,” the medic gritted as he unceremoniously yanked open First Aid’s chest plating. A veritable river of energon poured out, and Ratchet froze for a moment, whispering a shocked “Primus…” before he plunged his hands inside the apprentice medic’s open chest and abdomen.
“Energon transfusion, as many lines as you can get in him,” Ratchet ordered. Ironhide was already in motion as Ratchet continued to belt out instructions. “Full life support unit - frag! He’s been speared somehow - someone call for backup to the medbay!”
“We’re on it, Ratchet,” Ultra Magnus’ calm voice came from the medbay door, where he’d arrived to have his minor injuries tended. “Carry on.”
Sideswipe curled up tighter on his berth, shivering helplessly as he watched Ironhide and Ratchet in their frenzied attempt to save the junior medic. Ratchet’s hands moved in a furious dance, optics narrowed in desperate concentration as all the while he continued his stream of invectives, threats, instructions to Ironhide, along with promises to inflict dire punishment on First Aid for managing to get damaged in the middle of the fragging medbay for Primus’ sake, and if Aid thought he was going to go through all the trouble of finding another medic well he had better forget it, because there was NO WAY he was going through the trouble of training anyone else…
”Do you hear me, Aid?” Ratchet paused a moment to lean over and speak directly into the audios on the red helm. “We need you. You stay with us, don’t you DARE give up. We still need you here.”
Had he caused this somehow? Everything next to him was happening far too quickly, but Sideswipe’s thoughts felt muted, slow. Apparently he had woken up as First Aid was working on him and tackled him…but…that much damage…how the Pit? First Aid was not a fighter, but he was built to be a battlefield medic - his armor was nearly as tough as Ironhide’s. It certainly wouldn’t the first time Aid had been knocked around by a disoriented patient, and he always bounced back up, none the worse for wear. Sideswipe had seen him take a near miss by a blast earlier in the battle; First Aid had curled up like an armadillotron and tumbled nearly an entire span, and then uncurled and continued on his path to another injured mech without skipping a beat. Sideswipe checked again - his weapons were definitely offline, he couldn’t have fired them, so how….
Ratchet and Ironhide were rolling First Aid carefully but swiftly onto his side. A short length of glowing blue metal protruded at a flat angle from the armor in the junior medic’s lower back. Ratchet did something that caused the spear to spark and then go dark, wisps of smoke rising from the exposed length. Ironhide grasped the end and twisted it slightly, until Ratchet said “there,” and then began to delicately pull it out.
“Stop,” Ratchet ordered, and Ironhide paused, holding the piece of metal steady, his optics pinched with worry and concentration. Ratchet, who was now lying on his side on the floor next to First Aid, activated a small saw, and Sideswipe winced at the tortured screech of the saw slicing through metal.
“Ok, nice and easy, all the way out,” Ratchet instructed. As Ironhide smoothly removed part of the long slender spear from Aid’s back, Ratchet pulled a smaller piece, trailing more smoke from one end, from First Aid's open chest and tossed it quickly to the side. Sideswipe blinked in recognition. One of the Karkan energy spears! They were equipped with some sort of armor-piercing force field at the tip, dismayingly effective even at long range. One had been embedded in his leg. He remembered hazily trying to yank it out sometime during the battle, but it had hurt too much and he had ended up just leaving it there.
Ratchet and Ironhide gently rolled First Aid onto his back again, and Ratchet immediately returned his hands and welders to repairing the catastrophic damage the spear had left behind. Ironhide was in constant motion as well, attaching lines and monitors, until he finally knelt next to Ratchet.
“I’ve got four transfusion lines in him - what else?”
“See if you can get a few more in.” Ratchet’s voice was tight with strain. “It breached his spark chamber….”
Sideswipe could see that the motionless apprentice was now lying in an expanding pool of energon, and he had to shutter his optics for a moment as a wave of sick dizziness rushed over him. Normally he was the last mech to be bothered by the sight of a little spilled energon - Primus knew he spilled enough of it himself - but this was not a Decepticon leaking to death on the medbay floor.
It wasn’t like First Aid was a close friend or anyone in particular. He was just...there, always, in the background, quietly working, rarely venturing out of the medbay when they were on the Ark, engrossed in all sorts of tedious projects whenever they stopped at a new planet for supplies or the possibility of negotiating an alliance. Sideswipe tended to think of him as an extension of Ratchet, like his welder or laser scalpel. He had tried once to prank the junior medic, gluing him to one of the medbay walls with some pilfered adhesive. First Aid had offered up no resistance, just gone along with it quietly, with slightly bemused good humor. Where was the fun in that? Ratchet’s reaction had made it all worthwhile though, even if he still had a crick in his back from hand-scrubbing the medbay floors with a dental cleansing unit. Sideswipe knew he was walking the edge of deactivation by provoking Ratchet, but he just couldn’t seem to help himself. Ratchet was magnificent when he was in full throttle. And Ratchet might be a medic, but Sideswipe had seen him in battle, where he’d earned even Sunstreaker’s grudging respect.
First Aid, on the other hand…he didn’t even carry a weapon, wouldn’t even touch one for Primus’ sake. The one time he’d tried to toss First Aid a rifle so he could defend himself, he’d simply let it clatter to the ground, and the dressing down he’d gotten from Ironhide later on for that one still made his audials burn. The little red-and-white medic was utterly dull and boring, boxy and slow, not even worth the trouble of pranking. They didn’t have a single thing in common…and none of that explained why waves of guilt and sorrow kept washing through his circuits. Somehow, he knew it in his spark. This was his fault.
“Jazz and Ultra Magnus have the other patients in hand. Everyone is stable for now,” Ironhide rumbled softly as he returned with more transfusion lines, and opened another panel on First Aid’s arm to begin attaching them. The poor medic was covered with so many tubes and sensors he looked like he was being devoured by medical machinery gone mad. “How’s he doing?”
Sideswipe couldn’t hear Ratchet’s reply, but the slight drooping of Ironhide’s shoulders was not encouraging. He heard the second part of what Ratchet said though. “Go ahead and put Sunstreaker in restraints for now, until he wakes up. We don’t need a repeat of this.” A touch on his shoulder made him jump, and Sideswipe looked up to see Ultra Magnus standing over him.
“You need further repairs, Sideswipe,” the Ark commander said in his calm, deep voice, although Sideswipe did not miss his worried glance over the edge of the berth where Ratchet and Ironhide were still working on First Aid. “Roll over, soldier, so I can get a better look. I’m not a trained medic, but I can patch you up somewhat.”
Sideswipe hesitated. He had no reason not to trust Ultra Magnus -- he’d been strict, but fair, during the nearly two vorns under his command, even when he and Sunstreaker had admittedly pushed the rules to the limit and then some. Ultra Magnus didn’t seem angry, even though Sideswipe might have just deactivated a member of his crew (Sideswipe still wasn’t entirely sure how). Ratchet he trusted. First Aid, too, he realized, a little surprised looking back by how little he’d even thought about it, but...medbays had not always been good places. Old habits died hard. Ultra Magnus waited patiently until Sideswipe complied, rolling to his back and staring up at the ceiling, trying not to flinch as the commander examined the damage to his side and leg.
“It appears First Aid already sealed up the worst leaks, but I’ll see if I can clean it up a bit more and get your energon levels back up, if that’s acceptable.”
Asking permission, even. The commander offering to do basic repairs on a frontline soldier with his own hands. Sideswipe still had trouble getting used to it. He nodded, throwing one arm up to shade his optics. The glare of the overhead lights seemed like it was burning right into his processor. He felt shaky and overheated, the familiar sensation of his self-repair trying to rev up into high gear now that his battle protocols were convinced there were no immediate threats.
“You did well down there, Sideswipe,” Ultra Magnus said as he put in a new energon transfusion line and began straightening broken and tangled wiring with surprising gentleness. “I must admit I had my doubts at first, despite Prime’s endorsement. It takes one incorrigible scoundrel to know another, apparently.”
Sideswipe blinked at that. Had Ultra Magnus just called Optimus Prime a...scoundrel?
“Without you and your brother…” Ultra Magnus’s voice trailed off as several of the monitors on the floor that were hooked up to First Aid began beeping ominously. Sideswipe scooted back over to the edge of the berth, ignoring the commander’s sound of protest.
Ratchet was watching the monitors with the intensity of a cyberhawk as he administered a series of low-intensity shocks to First Aid’s spark chamber. “Come on,” he whispered. One of the monitors stopped beeping for a few moments, and Ratchet paused, looking up hopefully. The beeping resumed more urgently than before, and Ironhide made a small despairing noise as he picked up one of First Aid’s limp hands and cradled it gently.
“Sideswipe,” Ultra Magnus said firmly, tugging at Sideswipe’s shoulder until he was flat on the berth again. “Rest. I’m sure he’ll be….” Ultra Magnus shook his head, not meeting Sideswipe’s optics as he went back to working on his leg.
Sideswipe wanted to protest, but could only stare again at the ceiling, as the aching brightness of the lights began to blur in time with the beeping of the monitors, until they faded together into darkness and silence.
This entry was originally posted at http://playswithworms.dreamwidth.org/146590.html. Please comment wherever you wish.
This is the fic I started writing way back in...2008? Of all-by-himself sadsverse First Aid, except then I wanted to do a little background piece on his brothers and it turned into Protectobot Beginnings and consumed my brain for the next several years, lol. My main frustration has been trying to retrofit everything, since my headcanon for the Protectobots and the Twins and other characters has changed and evolved over the years, so some of the characterizations may seem a little inconsistent.
Title: Still Waters (1/?)
Characters: Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, First Aid, Ratchet
Universe: Protectobot Beginnings AU
Rating: K+
Word Count: 2697
Warnings: fairly graphic description of injury, bit of a cliffhanger chapter
Summary: Sideswipe discovers there may be more to First Aid than meets the eye.
“Sideswipe.”
The name - his name - was all that was holding him steady for the moment. The world was tilting, spinning; he wanted to grab something to make it stop only he couldn’t seem to find his hands.
“Sideswipe?”
Again, that quiet voice. He had to work to hear it, through the roar that filled his audios. Focus. There. Not far away. Not enemy. Don’t shoot this one, he thought, and simultaneously, with a thrill of horror, realized that he couldn’t shoot anyway. Weapons status: offline. Bad bad bad - he was so slaggin’ toast…
“Sideswipe, you’re ok. You’re in the medbay.”
Medbay. No wrestling or shouting allowed in the medbay…was he in trouble? Where was…the other one…yellow… Panic set in. Everything was too bright, he couldn’t see. His spark groped blindly and frantically for its other half. Where! Where was….
“Sunstreaker is right here. He’ll be fine. Can you hear me?”
Sunstreaker. The air left his vents in a gasping sob of relief. Near. He could feel his brother now, presence faint but undeniable. Another anchor to put the world back in its place. Pain was growing as well, but he welcomed it. It mapped out his body, giving it shape again. He had hands; they were gripping something tight enough to make his joints ache.
Sideswipe clenched his jaw as his head gave a sharp throb, but as it did so the blur of light and color in front of him suddenly focused. The helm in front of him was red and white, not yellow. He was close enough to see bright blue optics behind the visor, calm and steady and watching him intently.
He knew who this was, but it took awhile for the name to come. “Aid?” he managed finally.
“Yep,” was the cheerful, if somewhat breathless reply. “Back with us?”
“You got him, Aid?” Another voice…who?...Ratchet. That was Ratchet’s voice, from somewhere not too far away.
“More like he’s got me.” The last word was more a cough than spoken, but the optics in front of Sideswipe crinkled into a slight smile.
“Here, let me give you a hand, kid.” Ironhide. Sideswipe was relieved as his processor identified the familiar voice with no delays. First Aid’s optic ridges drew together in a small, puzzled frown as Sideswipe felt strong arms lifting him from behind.
“Just hold still a klik….” Ironhide grunted as he pulled the damaged frontliner up, and only then did Sideswipe realize he’d been pinning First Aid to the floor. Sideswipe bit back a yelp of pain as he briefly tried to put weight on his right leg, but then Ironhide lifted again. It was an effort to do so with his battle protocols still clamoring at him, but Sideswipe forced himself go limp and relax as the burly weapon’s master rolled him neatly onto a nearby berth, pushing a toppled energon transfusion unit out of the way as he did so. Sideswipe felt a short twinge as Ironhide pulled out the torn energon transfusion line sticking out from his arm. The weapons master moved stiffly, and Sideswipe could see the dried energon from a roughly patched injury on his side.
“I’ll let First Aid put in a new one for ya,” Ironhide said gruffly, as he tried to get the energon transfusion unit upright again. “He’ll do a prettier job of it.”
Sideswipe turned his head and felt his battle protocols gear down a few more notches as he saw the familiar yellow form of his brother, on the repair berth next to him. Ah yes. The stopover for supplies at Karkas III had turned into an ambush. There had been a battle, and now they were back on the Ark in the medbay. Things were making more sense now. Sunstreaker was offline, looking rather scorched around the edges, but he appeared to be otherwise intact.
Ironhide followed his glance. “Don’t you worry about Sunny now,” he said, patting Sideswipe’s shoulder reassuringly. “He took a couple of nasty jolts from those Karkan electro-grenades, but he’ll wake up his usual jolly self, especially once he gets a good look at his paint job.”
Ratchet looked up briefly from the prone form he was tending at the other end of the medbay, scanning the room in a quick assessment of the injured mechs before turning back to his current patient. “First Aid, what are you doing over there, taking a recharge nap?” he snapped irritably.
Sideswipe watched as Ironhide turned to look behind him on the floor next to his berth, and then blinked as the red mech dropped abruptly out of sight.
“Ratchet! Over here NOW!” At the panicked bellow from Ironhide, Sideswipe struggled to sit up, but had to settle for curling painfully on his side to peer over the edge of his berth. What he saw nearly stopped his spark cold. First Aid lay still on the floor, visor dark, as Ironhide hovered over him frantically. Sideswipe stared as Aid’s body arched in a weak convulsion, his engine revving and then faltering with an awful gurgling sound.
Things had stopped making sense again. His dazed CPU still struggling to explain what he was seeing, Sideswipe watched numbly as Ratchet skidded abruptly around the corner of his berth. Ratchet took one look at the stricken junior medic and dropped to his knees beside him, letting loose a string of processor-blistering oaths.
“Ratchet, we need to get him on a berth…” Ironhide began.
“Slaggit, ‘Hide, there’s no time,” the medic gritted as he unceremoniously yanked open First Aid’s chest plating. A veritable river of energon poured out, and Ratchet froze for a moment, whispering a shocked “Primus…” before he plunged his hands inside the apprentice medic’s open chest and abdomen.
“Energon transfusion, as many lines as you can get in him,” Ratchet ordered. Ironhide was already in motion as Ratchet continued to belt out instructions. “Full life support unit - frag! He’s been speared somehow - someone call for backup to the medbay!”
“We’re on it, Ratchet,” Ultra Magnus’ calm voice came from the medbay door, where he’d arrived to have his minor injuries tended. “Carry on.”
Sideswipe curled up tighter on his berth, shivering helplessly as he watched Ironhide and Ratchet in their frenzied attempt to save the junior medic. Ratchet’s hands moved in a furious dance, optics narrowed in desperate concentration as all the while he continued his stream of invectives, threats, instructions to Ironhide, along with promises to inflict dire punishment on First Aid for managing to get damaged in the middle of the fragging medbay for Primus’ sake, and if Aid thought he was going to go through all the trouble of finding another medic well he had better forget it, because there was NO WAY he was going through the trouble of training anyone else…
”Do you hear me, Aid?” Ratchet paused a moment to lean over and speak directly into the audios on the red helm. “We need you. You stay with us, don’t you DARE give up. We still need you here.”
Had he caused this somehow? Everything next to him was happening far too quickly, but Sideswipe’s thoughts felt muted, slow. Apparently he had woken up as First Aid was working on him and tackled him…but…that much damage…how the Pit? First Aid was not a fighter, but he was built to be a battlefield medic - his armor was nearly as tough as Ironhide’s. It certainly wouldn’t the first time Aid had been knocked around by a disoriented patient, and he always bounced back up, none the worse for wear. Sideswipe had seen him take a near miss by a blast earlier in the battle; First Aid had curled up like an armadillotron and tumbled nearly an entire span, and then uncurled and continued on his path to another injured mech without skipping a beat. Sideswipe checked again - his weapons were definitely offline, he couldn’t have fired them, so how….
Ratchet and Ironhide were rolling First Aid carefully but swiftly onto his side. A short length of glowing blue metal protruded at a flat angle from the armor in the junior medic’s lower back. Ratchet did something that caused the spear to spark and then go dark, wisps of smoke rising from the exposed length. Ironhide grasped the end and twisted it slightly, until Ratchet said “there,” and then began to delicately pull it out.
“Stop,” Ratchet ordered, and Ironhide paused, holding the piece of metal steady, his optics pinched with worry and concentration. Ratchet, who was now lying on his side on the floor next to First Aid, activated a small saw, and Sideswipe winced at the tortured screech of the saw slicing through metal.
“Ok, nice and easy, all the way out,” Ratchet instructed. As Ironhide smoothly removed part of the long slender spear from Aid’s back, Ratchet pulled a smaller piece, trailing more smoke from one end, from First Aid's open chest and tossed it quickly to the side. Sideswipe blinked in recognition. One of the Karkan energy spears! They were equipped with some sort of armor-piercing force field at the tip, dismayingly effective even at long range. One had been embedded in his leg. He remembered hazily trying to yank it out sometime during the battle, but it had hurt too much and he had ended up just leaving it there.
Ratchet and Ironhide gently rolled First Aid onto his back again, and Ratchet immediately returned his hands and welders to repairing the catastrophic damage the spear had left behind. Ironhide was in constant motion as well, attaching lines and monitors, until he finally knelt next to Ratchet.
“I’ve got four transfusion lines in him - what else?”
“See if you can get a few more in.” Ratchet’s voice was tight with strain. “It breached his spark chamber….”
Sideswipe could see that the motionless apprentice was now lying in an expanding pool of energon, and he had to shutter his optics for a moment as a wave of sick dizziness rushed over him. Normally he was the last mech to be bothered by the sight of a little spilled energon - Primus knew he spilled enough of it himself - but this was not a Decepticon leaking to death on the medbay floor.
It wasn’t like First Aid was a close friend or anyone in particular. He was just...there, always, in the background, quietly working, rarely venturing out of the medbay when they were on the Ark, engrossed in all sorts of tedious projects whenever they stopped at a new planet for supplies or the possibility of negotiating an alliance. Sideswipe tended to think of him as an extension of Ratchet, like his welder or laser scalpel. He had tried once to prank the junior medic, gluing him to one of the medbay walls with some pilfered adhesive. First Aid had offered up no resistance, just gone along with it quietly, with slightly bemused good humor. Where was the fun in that? Ratchet’s reaction had made it all worthwhile though, even if he still had a crick in his back from hand-scrubbing the medbay floors with a dental cleansing unit. Sideswipe knew he was walking the edge of deactivation by provoking Ratchet, but he just couldn’t seem to help himself. Ratchet was magnificent when he was in full throttle. And Ratchet might be a medic, but Sideswipe had seen him in battle, where he’d earned even Sunstreaker’s grudging respect.
First Aid, on the other hand…he didn’t even carry a weapon, wouldn’t even touch one for Primus’ sake. The one time he’d tried to toss First Aid a rifle so he could defend himself, he’d simply let it clatter to the ground, and the dressing down he’d gotten from Ironhide later on for that one still made his audials burn. The little red-and-white medic was utterly dull and boring, boxy and slow, not even worth the trouble of pranking. They didn’t have a single thing in common…and none of that explained why waves of guilt and sorrow kept washing through his circuits. Somehow, he knew it in his spark. This was his fault.
“Jazz and Ultra Magnus have the other patients in hand. Everyone is stable for now,” Ironhide rumbled softly as he returned with more transfusion lines, and opened another panel on First Aid’s arm to begin attaching them. The poor medic was covered with so many tubes and sensors he looked like he was being devoured by medical machinery gone mad. “How’s he doing?”
Sideswipe couldn’t hear Ratchet’s reply, but the slight drooping of Ironhide’s shoulders was not encouraging. He heard the second part of what Ratchet said though. “Go ahead and put Sunstreaker in restraints for now, until he wakes up. We don’t need a repeat of this.” A touch on his shoulder made him jump, and Sideswipe looked up to see Ultra Magnus standing over him.
“You need further repairs, Sideswipe,” the Ark commander said in his calm, deep voice, although Sideswipe did not miss his worried glance over the edge of the berth where Ratchet and Ironhide were still working on First Aid. “Roll over, soldier, so I can get a better look. I’m not a trained medic, but I can patch you up somewhat.”
Sideswipe hesitated. He had no reason not to trust Ultra Magnus -- he’d been strict, but fair, during the nearly two vorns under his command, even when he and Sunstreaker had admittedly pushed the rules to the limit and then some. Ultra Magnus didn’t seem angry, even though Sideswipe might have just deactivated a member of his crew (Sideswipe still wasn’t entirely sure how). Ratchet he trusted. First Aid, too, he realized, a little surprised looking back by how little he’d even thought about it, but...medbays had not always been good places. Old habits died hard. Ultra Magnus waited patiently until Sideswipe complied, rolling to his back and staring up at the ceiling, trying not to flinch as the commander examined the damage to his side and leg.
“It appears First Aid already sealed up the worst leaks, but I’ll see if I can clean it up a bit more and get your energon levels back up, if that’s acceptable.”
Asking permission, even. The commander offering to do basic repairs on a frontline soldier with his own hands. Sideswipe still had trouble getting used to it. He nodded, throwing one arm up to shade his optics. The glare of the overhead lights seemed like it was burning right into his processor. He felt shaky and overheated, the familiar sensation of his self-repair trying to rev up into high gear now that his battle protocols were convinced there were no immediate threats.
“You did well down there, Sideswipe,” Ultra Magnus said as he put in a new energon transfusion line and began straightening broken and tangled wiring with surprising gentleness. “I must admit I had my doubts at first, despite Prime’s endorsement. It takes one incorrigible scoundrel to know another, apparently.”
Sideswipe blinked at that. Had Ultra Magnus just called Optimus Prime a...scoundrel?
“Without you and your brother…” Ultra Magnus’s voice trailed off as several of the monitors on the floor that were hooked up to First Aid began beeping ominously. Sideswipe scooted back over to the edge of the berth, ignoring the commander’s sound of protest.
Ratchet was watching the monitors with the intensity of a cyberhawk as he administered a series of low-intensity shocks to First Aid’s spark chamber. “Come on,” he whispered. One of the monitors stopped beeping for a few moments, and Ratchet paused, looking up hopefully. The beeping resumed more urgently than before, and Ironhide made a small despairing noise as he picked up one of First Aid’s limp hands and cradled it gently.
“Sideswipe,” Ultra Magnus said firmly, tugging at Sideswipe’s shoulder until he was flat on the berth again. “Rest. I’m sure he’ll be….” Ultra Magnus shook his head, not meeting Sideswipe’s optics as he went back to working on his leg.
Sideswipe wanted to protest, but could only stare again at the ceiling, as the aching brightness of the lights began to blur in time with the beeping of the monitors, until they faded together into darkness and silence.
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