[IDW] Walking the Wire 09/12
Sep. 10th, 2018 06:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dracoqueen22Title: Walking the Wire 8/12
Universe: IDW MTMTE Season Two, Hot to Trot sequel, Between the Lines series
Characters: Ratchet/Megatron, Rodimus, Ultra Magnus, Rung, Ravage, Bluestreak, Perceptor
Rating: M
Enticements: Sticky Sex, BDSM themes, Bondage, Dom/Sub Themes, BDSM Education, Trust Issues, Angst, Vampires/Energy Eaters, mentions of torture, canon-typical violence, the LL always finds trouble
Description: What Megatron and Ratchet are to each other is a matter up for debate, one that gets a little tangled when the Lost Light stumbles into an unexpected complication.
Commission for Larry Draws
Chapter Nine
“The planet’s charted as 18835.113, but the locals call it Clandestine,” Broadside, their current navigator, explained as the planet loomed in front of them, perfectly spherical with barely any atmosphere to speak of. “It’s pretty barren according to our sensors – no local wildlife of the flora or fauna variety. But we have detected Cybertronian signals coming from the southern hemisphere.”
Ratchet hung back from the crowd as the command trio clustered around the main screen, their attention caught by Clandestine as it grew closer. They were heading toward the source of the Cybertronian signals no doubt. Straight into danger, as it were, which came as no surprise.
He folded his arms and stared over their heads at the rust-gray lands of Clandestine. Not a spot of fluid he could see. Nothing to indicate rivers or lakes or oceans or seas. It looked cracked and empty, like it was about to split apart at any moment.
What a terrible place to build a colony. What had brought the knights here? Why this planet? What made it a good choice?
“It’s kind of ugly, isn’t it?”
In his peripherals, Bluestreak was visible stepping up beside him. He nudged Ratchet with a playful elbow.
“But I guess we aren’t here for the sights.” He grinned, his optics dancing with amusement, and his hand slid around Ratchet’s lower back, teasing a seam.
Ratchet ignored the slight frisson of pleasure. “You volunteering for this fool’s expedition?” he asked. He would, of course, be going. Someone had to keep the idiots alive.
Bluestreak snorted. “No. I’m staying right here. Vampires are of no interest to me. Now if we find another port like Quartex, that’s a different story.” He winked and dipped a playful finger against Ratchet’s spinal strut. “I just came up here to check on you.”
Heat filtered into Ratchet’s face. He ignored it. “I’m fine,” he said, more gruffly than he meant. “Appreciate you helping an old, drunk mech back to his room though. If I’d passed out in Swerve’s, I’d have woken up with all manner of designs on my armor.”
He’d seen them do it to others before. Sometimes, the mech was lucky and the lewd phrases and pictures washed off in the racks. Sometimes, the prank was a bit more sinister, and it required paint stripper.
“Just returning the favor.” Bluestreak leaned against Ratchet’s side, sharing warmth, his field flooding Ratchet’s with affection. “I meant though, if you’re okay about what led to your evening of poor choices.”
Ratchet sighed, his optics straying to the front, where the command trio argued amongst themselves about something. Rodimus, no doubt, demanded something ill-advised. Ultra Magnus cautioned they tread lightly. Megatron was caught between them, somehow a mix of both, aggravation painted in the lines of his face as he pinched at the bridge of his nose.
“You sent Rung, didn’t you?” Ratchet asked.
Bluestreak giggled. “I might have mentioned to him that you were in need of some company in the morning.” He leaned harder against Ratchet’s side. “Plus I knew you needed someone to put things in perspective, given what you let slip.”
Ratchet looked at Bluestreak, who had the most innocent expression Ratchet didn’t believe for a moment. “I’m surprised you didn’t leave my traitorous aft in the middle of a hallway.”
“Nothing you’ve done qualifies as a betrayal.” Bluestreak tilted his head, resting his chin on Ratchet’s shoulder. “Just because I’ve got resentment boiling inside of me for centuries, doesn’t mean I’m going to hate you for knowing how to move forward. Besides, if it weren’t for his history, I’d say you two are actually well matched.”
The heat turned into an inferno. Ratchet knew if he looked into a mirror, it would be visible in the dermal layer of his face.
He tore his attention away from Bluestreak, back to the arguing trio, but that was no better choice, because Megatron picked that moment to look their direction. His expression was unreadable, but there was heat in his optics. It was only when his gaze slid to Bluestreak that something flickered over his face before he abruptly turned his attention back to Rodimus, who was dancing with what was, no doubt, a victory.
“Mmm, and I think someone’s a little jealous,” Bluestreak added with a laugh. “Or maybe he’s remembering the warning I gave him.”
“Warning? What? Bluestreak--”
“Oh, it’s fine.” Bluestreak squeezed his arm and lifted up, winking at Ratchet. “You know how it is, Ratchet. I always look after my own, especially when dangerous former warlords take it upon themselves to put hands where they shouldn’t.”
Ratchet rubbed at his face. “I’m not even sure, at this point, if I should be grateful or offended.”
“Grateful,” Bluestreak murmured and planted a kiss on Ratchet’s cheek. “Go have fun on your expedition. You better come back alive.”
“I’ll try.”
Bluestreak chuckled and then he was gone, taking the warmth and comfort of his field with him.
Ratchet sighed and lowered his hand.
Megatron was looking at him again, expression unreadable, but his optics hot. Ratchet shivered, something crawling down his spinal strut. Something a lot like want and need.
He spun on a heelstrut and stomped toward the medical bay. They’d be landing soon, and he wanted to make sure his mobile medkit was fully stocked. Primus only knew what they’d find on Clandestine, and Ratchet wanted to be prepared.
If he felt Megatron’s gaze on his back, Ratchet pretended otherwise.
~
Clandestine housed a colony so large it had a landing pad for a ship the Lost Light’s size. Which meant they wouldn’t have to cram into the Rodpod, a fact which disappointed Rodimus and relieved everyone else. Instead, they set the Lost Light down on the runway. They weren’t lacking for space.
Rodimus announced a free-for-all. Anyone could disembark if they wanted.
“Just remember,” he’d said cheerfully. “Don’t wander too far because if we need to leave in a hurry, I don’t want to leave anyone behind.”
Not that Ratchet suspected Rodimus actually would, but some of the crew probably believed him. No matter. There were few who wanted to explore the ruins of a colony, especially one so quiet and still.
Rumors of the energy eaters, vampires as they’d been named despite Perceptor’s insistence otherwise, meant many of the crew preferred to stay aboard.
It was only about a dozen or so who chose to step foot on the dingy gray ground. Ratchet and Megatron were among them, of course. Perceptor and Brainstorm, who were both giddy in their own ways, and Nightbeat, whose optics shone with excitement at the possibility of solving a mystery. Rodimus, with Ultra Magnus looming over him like he intended to protect their often reckless leader. Skids and Nautica and Chromedome and Rewind, a little quartet of curiosity and guardian.
Buildings loomed in front of them, constructed of an odd mix of steel and stone, the latter shaped from the same gray particulate around them. The land was flat, with only a few rises in either direction, and a pair of suns shone down at them from opposite directions, their illumination distant and pale.
He felt the chill in the air. No wonder there was no organic life. There was nothing to sustain it here.
The landing strip was empty of ship. Docking clamps suggested there had been vessels here once. Ratchet suspected that they’d all launched when the energy eaters attacked. One of them might have even housed the scout ship they’d found once.
Ratchet went his own way from the group. They scattered throughout the ruins, though maybe ruins was the wrong word. The buildings weren’t dilapidated, just abandoned. They showed a few signs of wear – cracked foundations, fading paint, rusted metal – but nothing worse than the buildings in the slums.
The silence was eerie.
Even more so when he took the main street down the center of the settlement where paved roads covered in grit crunched beneath his feet. The first crumpled frame startled him, made his spark pound in his chassis. A cursory examination revealed the mech was dead, and had been for quite some time. He swept a portable UV light over it, and found the telltale bites of an energy eater.
Multiple ones. Like he’d been overrun by a horde of them, perhaps drained dry in a matter of seconds.
It was horrifying.
In that moment, Ratchet wished he hadn’t set off into the settlement on his own. Every quiet creak, quiet whisper of sound, put him on edge.
He rose from his crouch and peered down the street. More frames lay scattered across the ground, limbs twisted in a vain attempt at escape. He suspected that if he swept his light over all of them, he’d find something similar. It was as if a horde of energy-eaters had descended on Clandestine.
Ratchet moved into the nearest building, wondering what horror awaited him inside. It couldn’t be worse than the bodies strewn in the streets.
He found himself in a lobby. A small desk crouched at the front and numbered boxes lined the walls to the left and right. Sloped ramps curved to either side of the desk, leading upward to a second level. An apartment complex perhaps?
More belongings scattered across the floor from those who’d fled in a hurry. There were blaster marks in the walls, cuts as well, evidence of bladed weapons.
A gray frame sat behind the desk, twisted in agony, bite marks visible in a sweep of UV light, some larger than others. It was the first frame Ratchet had seen with any kind of alt-mode kibble. Landing skids and blades suggested a rotary.
A dull thunk echoed from the back of the building.
Ratchet went still.
They’d yet to decide what exactly the energy eaters looked like. It was impossible to tell from the bite alone, and though there were many theories, no one knew for sure. Perceptor had found several old records, but even those had been vague and inconsistent.
The prevailing theory was that they had multiple limbs, multiple mouths, and likely, multiple sucker-like tentacles. Perceptor theorized they were the size of minibots at the least, given the size of the mechs they’d consumed.
Seeing the corpses on Clandestine, however, Ratchet wanted to revisit that theory. Perhaps they were small, like scraplets.
Another thump-rattled rose from the back of the building, through a door to the left of the right rampwell. It was louder this time, as though made by a larger beast.
Then again, maybe they came in a variety of deadly sizes.
Ratchet popped open his thigh compartment and pulled out his handgun. It had half a charge. Hopefully, that would be enough.
He should have grabbed another cartridge.
He had two options. He could make a run for it, or he could investigate. One was a distinctly Rodimus thing to do. The other would not answer any questions they had about what happened to the colony.
Ratchet glanced at the exit, back toward the door, and made his decision. He crept around the desk, hip against the edge of it, and slid toward the exit.
The far door burst open, the bottom edge screeching across the floor. Ratchet whirled toward it, spark thumping wildly. In the midst of a cloud of dust and noise, Ratchet heard coughing, and a large frame emerged. He lifted his gun to fire but a voice stayed his hand.
“That lock should not have been so strong!”
Large hands waved through the dust as Megatron came into view, face pinched with annoyance, his plating streaked in grime. He grumbled and kicked the door, and only then did he notice Ratchet.
Who was pointing a gun at him.
Megatron frowned and stared at him. “Are you so disgusted by our relationship that we’re back to the point where you feel the need to point a gun at me?”
Ratchet scowled. “I thought you were one of the creatures.” He tucked the gun back into his thigh. “What were you doing?”
“Investigating. Same as you.” Megatron came further into the room, peering into the shadows and nooks and crannies, as Ratchet had done earlier. “Ah, an apartment complex. I suspect we’ll find nothing but more ghosts.”
“That’s because there’s nothing here that’s any good for any of us,” Ratchet snapped, trying to soothe his ruffled armor and failing. His hands shook for Primus’ sake.
He’d survived the Cybertronian war. Why did this set him so badly on edge?
Ratchet turned his back on Megatron and stalked to the exit. “I’m moving on.”
“Shall I join you?”
Ratchet paused in the door frame – the remains of the thick transsteel crunched beneath his feet. The energon-eaters had probably burst through it.
“If it means you won’t scare the living daylights out of me again, by all means, join me,” Ratchet said, hoping he sounded sufficiently glib and not desperate.
It must have worked.
Megatron followed him out the door, and they started further down the main thoroughfare. The entire settlement followed an orderly architecture, with all streets leading toward the center. A low wall and massive flagpoles were visible in the distance.
Ratchet didn’t know what was more uncomfortable, the absence of life around them or the tense silence between Megatron and himself.
Clandestine carried the silence of a battlefield, after the last shot had been fired and retreat had been called, but there was little evidence of war. Had the entire city been overrun in a matter of seconds? Had the inhabitants no opportunity to save themselves?
They’d fled for their lives. The attack must have come upon them suddenly. Purchases lay strewn in the streets. Doors were wide open if they weren’t shattered. Some had been attacked mid-flight, left to die in the roads, their frames locked in agony and desperation, reaching for escape.
It was silent. There wasn’t even a breeze to stir the thin mesh flags hanging limp from their poles, their colors dulled by time and exposure.
Ratchet drew closer Megatron before he realized what he was doing and forced himself away. He had to break the eerie quiet before he went mad.
“Drift would’ve made some comment about how the aura of this place is drab and echoing with loss,” Ratchet muttered.
He wasn’t sure why his thoughts kept turning to Drift as of late. Perhaps because of the truth Rodimus had revealed. Or because Megatron’s presence was too much like Drift’s had been – a former Decepticon in their midst.
Megatron snorted. “That does not sound like the Deadlock I knew.”
Ratchet gave him a sidelong look, and if it lingered on the stolen Autobot badge on Megatron’s chassis, that was more the point. “Sometimes, mechs change.”
Megatron abruptly paused and crouched beside a gray frame, collapsed facedown on the sidewalk. “Not like that, they don’t,” he said, and rolled the corpse over.
Like many of the others, this one had no discernible alt-mode. No wheels. No wings. No tracks. Nothing.
Was it a city of mostly monoformers? Was that why they had built this pseudo-colony so far from all the others? Were they less Knights of Cybertron and more of an offshoot?
It seemed all they were finding were more mysteries.
Ratchet stared down at his former lover and crossed his arms. “You know, funny you should say that, given your current circumstances.”
“I am who I’ve always been.” Megatron rose to his full height, limbs creaking, sounding more like he were Ratchet’s age with every movement. “I’m only reclaiming myself. I was not sparked a killer. None of us were.”
“And yet look what you’ve made us.” Ratchet’s shoulders hunched, a chill creeping under his armor. If it was the atmosphere or his own rapidly beating spark to blame, he didn’t know.
They moved forward, their feet crunching over the ground, the noise echoing in the still quiet. Where the others had gone, Ratchet didn’t know. Behind them, the Lost Light loomed over the settlement, a guardian too many centuries too late.
“That was out of necessity,” Megatron replied at length. His gaze swept the roadway and the sidewalks.
He searched for something. Or perhaps he was counting the fallen, comparing it to some internal metric. Too few for a battle, too many for an accident.
Ratchet was guilty of the same cataloguing.
“It was out of fear,” Ratchet countered, and dared Megatron to argue otherwise. He hadn’t meant to embroil them in a philosophical discussion, but maybe it was inevitable.
It had been simmering between them from the moment Ratchet showed up at Megatron’s hab to end things. Or perhaps earlier than that. From the third time Ratchet ended up in Megatron’s berth and realized he wanted to keep trying.
Megatron turned to face him, and Ratchet should have continued without him, but he didn’t. They were on the precipice of something here. A culmination of the twisting, churning emotions thick between them for the past couple of weeks.
“Are not most desperate actions born of fear?” Megatron asked.
Ratchet twisted his jaw. “I don’t think Drift’s turn to Autobot was because of fear,” he ground out.
Though whether or not Drift’s defection was his own choice was still a matter up for debate, in Ratchet’s opinion. Oh, he felt Drift’s defection was sincere, but he was well aware Drift had the tendency to suborn himself to a stronger influence when the chance arose.
Megatron rolled his optics. “Of course it was,” he said, with the caustic tone of someone speaking to another who was particularly stupid. “Just as I’ve always been a disposable, raging against my cage, Drift or Deadlock or whoever he calls himself, will always be a mech desperate to belong.”
Ratchet almost flinched. That Megatron had so correctly diagnosed Drift hinted of a stronger relationship in their past, stronger than Drift had ever let on.
“Then what am I?” Ratchet demanded. “Since you’re so attuned to a mech’s secret desires and all.”
Megatron’s optics softened. “You,” he said, “are always trying to save someone. Except in the process, you tend to forget that sometimes, you need saving, too.”
Like a blaster shot to the spark. It wasn’t right, how accurate Megatron was. Like he could peel apart a mech’s chassis and rifle through their spark layers.
Ratchet snorted and stared hard at a building nearby, rusting on its foundation. “If that were true, I wouldn’t have a single spark on my hands. And I wouldn’t have betrayed every vow I ever took.”
“Necessity often trumps personal choice.”
“That sounds like an excuse.”
Megatron audibly cycled a ventilation. “It will always sound like an excuse, no matter what I say or claim,” he said. “You’re like the others, those who eventually tell me all the ways I should have responded, rather than addressing those who caused the hurt.”
Ratchet’s mouth snapped shut. He felt, more than heard, the accusation in Megatron’s tone. Blame the victim, Megatron all but screamed at him. Blame me for reacting to pain and misery.
Guilt clawed into his intake, and Ratchet swallowed it down. He would not be shamed into defending Megatron’s actions. “There are explanations, and there are excuses. Don’t confuse the two,” he snapped. “I never said you didn’t have reason. Your methods were lacking, yeah, but never your reason.”
“That’s the thing about it, Ratchet.” Megatron took a step closer to him, not out of threat, but so he could lower his voice, somehow make this conversation more intimate. “No method would have ever been safe enough. No method would have brought quicker results while mechs like me were dying, were murdered. There’s a point where I went too far, I know that now, it’s why I made the choice I made. But I will never stand here and tell you that every choice I made was wrong.”
It would be so easy to lie and cast the first stone.
But Ratchet knew Megatron was right. Down to the smallest flicker of his spark, he knew Megatron had a point. Peaceful resistance would have only been quashed by the Senate faster than it could be built. If Megatron hadn’t built the Decepticons into what they were, Cybertron would have continued on its steady course toward destruction.
Maybe Megatron had only hastened that end. Maybe it was inevitable. Ratchet didn’t know. He wasn’t an economist, a socialist, a historian. He was just a medic. He fixed mechs. Repaired them. Healed them.
Do no harm.
And once upon a time, in the midst of war, he’d abandoned every last one of his vows to save his own spark, and the sparks of others. He’d killed. He’d maimed. He’d prioritized injuries. He’d sent his patients out to their deaths.
He’d made choices.
Most of them, he’d make all over again.
Ratchet cycled a ventilation and turned away from Megatron. “We should keep moving,” he said, his voice thin and reedy in the absence of ambient noise. “If we fall behind too much, Rodimus will gloat when he has to send out a search party.”
“And we can’t have that,” Megatron drawled. He shifted, gesturing ahead of them, his expression carefully blank. “Lead the way, doctor.”
Megatron let their discussion drop. How gracious of him. How indulgent. Or maybe, he was saving the venom for later.
It was impossible to know. Ratchet was no closer to understanding Megatron now, then he was before they fell into the berth together.
They walked in silence.
A familiar symbol came into view. Not the incomprehensible jargon of the knights, but one painted on Ratchet’s very own frame. It was a medical center. Perhaps he could find some information on the creatures that had led this colony to its destruction.
The front doors, made of clear transsteel, had been completely shattered, likely by a press of citizens fleeing their deaths. Ratchet altered his course, and Megatron moved to follow him.
The air sizzled with tension. Again, Ratchet didn’t know which was worse – this thing without a name or the taste of death in the air.
It was gloomy in the main lobby. There were fewer corpses than Ratchet would have expected, most of them pointed toward the door, as though they were running out of the hospital instead of into it. Not a good sign.
“Perhaps we should search elsewhere,” Megatron said.
“Are you afraid?” Ratchet asked as he took the first open door, pushing it fully aside with a creak of rusty hinges. More dim and gloom greeted him.
The ceilings were low, only a handsbreath from the top of his head, which meant Megatron had to stoop to fit. Given the relative size of the corpses, Ratchet was not surprised. These knights seemed to be smaller as a rule.
“Fear is not the word I would use,” Megatron muttered. His crunched over the detritus littering the floor. “There is something unsettling about abandoned medcenters. Always has been.”
Ratchet snorted. “Never took you for the superstitious sort.” A set of double doors squeaked open, depositing them into what appeared to be an operating theater. An oddly positioned one, no less. This was not how Ratchet would have designed a medcenter.
There were no corpses here. Nothing but immaculate surgical equipment layered in dust. There was another set of doors beyond, probably recovery rooms. Some of the equipment wasn’t recognizable or crude compared to what Ratchet employed.
“Superstition and caution often go hand in hand,” Megatron said, his voice echoing in the abandoned room. “Barring that, I’ve found that medical buildings are not always places of comfort.”
Ratchet thought of Pharma, of Delphi, and he had to concede Megatron’s point.
He pushed through double doors on the far end, one hanging from a single hinge. It was indeed a recovery room, with two long rows of cubicles to either side. Curiously each had a locked door and the wall facing the corridor was windowed. Most were empty.
Two were not.
Ratchet did not know what happened to the mech in the first room, but the corpse resembled nothing like the others. This one appeared to have been… masticated, for lack of a better word. Torn plating, limbs at odd angles, wires hanging free, a look of agony on a face largely stripped of dermal plating.
Ratchet hurried on, nausea churning in his tanks.
“What in Primus’ name is that?” Megatron demanded from behind him.
“Primus had nothing to do with whatever happened in that room,” Ratchet said. If he were at all religious, he would have said a prayer.
The next was even worse. The door hung slightly open as if inviting Ratchet to investigate further, and he stepped through as if on auto-pilot. The corpse was a balled heap on the floor, as if turned inside out, and evidence of scorch streaking across his visible armor.
He looked like someone who had been made to transform over and over again, perhaps as a form of punishment. Perhaps he’d contracted a virus.
Ratchet crouched by the poor mech. He had tires – not a monoformer. The edge of a transformation circuit peeked out from the remains of the mech’s abdomen, and it was a blackened, half-melted mess.
T-cog burn out indeed. Perhaps that was what had happened to the other as well. Ratchet wouldn’t know for sure without an autopsy, but this mech looked to have suffered enough. He swept the corpse with the UV light.
No bites.
Megatron stepped up behind him. “And this one?”
“I’m not sure,” Ratchet admitted, dread churning in his tanks.
The amount of monoformers. The unusual, almost tortured frame here and in the previous room. The energy eaters themselves. He didn’t like it.
Ratchet ground his denta. “But it definitely doesn’t look a frag thing like someone was trying to help him.”
He pushed to his feet, spinning back toward the way they came.
“I need to find the records room.” Ratchet pushed past Megatron, his spark feeling heavier and heavier in his chassis. To pervert a place of healing into this, it was unconscionable.
It was Pharma all over again.
“What are you talking about?” Megatron followed, and where before he had been making so much noise, he now moved with unnatural silence for a mech of his size.
“I have to know what they were doing here.”
Ratchet stormed back through the surgical ward and back into the main lobby. He found a rampwell that went down and took it. He wished the lifts worked, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“How do you know where it is?” Megatron didn’t have to follow, but he did. Ratchet didn’t want to think about what that meant.
He passed the exits for one level and then another. He kept going. The dark closed around them, as though it had physical shape, until Ratchet’s headlights and their biolights were the only thing to pierce it.
“Records are always kept in the basement,” Ratchet said. Or at least he hoped that Clandestine’s medcenter followed the standard construction. “In every hospital, on every planet, for every species I’ve ever visited, the records room has always been in the basement.”
The rampwell ended at a single door. Plain. Locked with a physical key, but the lock so rusted it only took a single kick to send the door bursting inward. His headlights illuminated a vast space empty of corpses. But then, who would flee to the basement where there was no escape?
“What do you think you’re going to find?”
“Answers.”
Ratchet couldn’t see the far wall because his headlights did not reach that far. But there were rows of personal consoles, no doubt for the data workers to sit and toil away, processing numerous lines of diagnostic code. They would have managed and maintained the records, cataloging, keytagging, et cetera.
Ratchet picked the nearest one and yanked out the stool, sitting down in it with a creak of ancient hydraulics.
“Ratchet, there’s no power,” Megatron said.
Ratchet jerked a handful of cables out of his wrist compartment and flicked through them, relieved to find that one to fit these ancient ports. Some things were still universal. He plugged into the computer and initiated a power surge, like jumping a dead battery.
The computer whirred to life.
“You can’t do that indefinitely,” Megatron warned him.
“I don’t need long,” Ratchet said as the screen flickered to life. “I want to copy the hard drive. I can’t even read their language. I’ll need Rewind for that. But I won’t leave until I have something to tell me what they were doing here.”
The filing system didn’t want to cooperate. It didn’t recognize him as a registered user. It kept throwing up firewalls.
Ratchet responded with permission codes, every single one he had in his archives, including one Optimus had given him, until the computer finally relented with a whimper. It allowed him access to the core system. He started copying.
“Why does it matter to you?”
Ratchet’s free hand rested on the desk, curling into a fist. The flicker of the transfer reflected back at him, the computer humming and whirring. “Because what I saw up there was not healing. It was torture.”
Megatron’s field spiked with unease.
“Haven’t you wondered why this settlement is so far from all the other coordinates? Why it’s the opposite direction from the Matrix map?” Ratchet watched the progress bar, counting down until he could disconnect. He felt dirty just being plugged into it, as if the horror could infect him somehow.
“I have. I’d assumed it was because the Knights were determined to colonize every sector of the galaxy.” Megatron scuffed the floor as he turned away, perhaps to investigate another corner of the records room.
Like the Decepticons once did? Ratchet thought, rather snide, but he kept it to himself. His unease made him snappish. He wanted to get out of here. His armor crawled, his spark beat faster, and he could have sworn something watched him from the dark, beyond where his headlights could reach.
“I don’t think that’s it,” Ratchet said, letting his voice fill the quiet rather than the echoing nothing. “I think they’re out here because they were exiled from the knights. Extremists maybe. I think that they are monoformers, so radicalized they disdained any alt-mode, even if it wasn’t their own.”
“Fanatics.” Megatron vented noisily. “Wonderful.”
“You’d know,” Ratchet muttered. Hadn’t Megatron worked very hard to create fanatical worshipers of his own?
Something whispered into the dark, a susurrus of sound that didn’t belong. Ratchet went still. The download continued, pushing past seventy-eight percent.
“What was that?” Ratchet asked, half-risen from his stool, his free hand on his thigh compartment.
“I heard nothing,” Megatron replied. His voice came from opposite the sound, perhaps to far to catch the whisper-quiet noise.
Shhh-hsssss-tmp.
There it was again. Ratchet’s head turned to the left, optics searching the dark, sensors straining. His spark pounded so hard it echoed in his audials.
“That I heard,” Megatron said.
“We’re not alone.” Ratchet’s fingers closed around his blaster.
Something burst out of the dark, something with fangs that gleamed in his headlights, and tentacles snapping out, aiming for Ratchet’s chassis. He fired, blaster lighting up the dark, making contact with the nauseating stench of burning organic, before the weapon was knocked out of his hands.
Frag.
Ratchet jerked back, but something wrapped around his other wrist, tugging him forward. He panicked as the stench of something dead, floated across his sensors. He twisted, yanking on the cable, reaching with his free hand for something, anything to use as a weapon.
“Ratchet!”
His fingers closed around the console, the monitor gleaming balefully at him. Ratchet grabbed and yanked, swinging it forward like a bludgeon, making contact. The thing holding him shrieked and hissed, an unearthly sound. Wetness splattered, hot and hissing, and Ratchet struck again and again. His cable jerked free of the computer, pulling the power supply, casting the basement into darkness save for the wild sweeps of his headlights. Whatever had him was long, tubular, like a dweller with multiple cables.
It didn’t matter what it looked like. Ratchet hit it again and again, trying to free his arm. He hooked the stool with his ankle and lobbed it at the beast. There was a dull, moist thud as it collided, and Ratchet’s arm was abruptly released.
He lost his balance and fell, hitting the ground hard. His head spun, processor working overtime. He heard a roar, didn’t know if it was Megatron or the monster. His headlights flickered. Something licked at the bottom of his feet. The handle of his handgun glinted in the flickering lights.
Ratchet snatched up his blaster and rolled to his back, firing blindly at the beast illuminated by the sweeps of his headlights. It roared and hissed, massive body rearing back as more scorched organic stink filled the air. It thrashed and a nearby desk clattered across the floor.
Ratchet lurched to his feet and snatched up the stool again, just as he heard a shout and a large thump. Something hit the ground hard, and Ratchet didn’t need light to know it was Megatron. He surged forward, lashing at the creature with his stool, firing blindly at the beast, pulling the trigger over and over again.
The monster keened, a horrendous noise. It flopped down, liquid spilling out of it, splashing over Ratchet’s feet. He kept firing. He didn’t know if the beast could pull itself together. He didn’t know if it could be killed. His blaster ran out of charge, his fingers ached on the trigger. The stench choked him.
“Ratchet! It’s dead!”
Arms wrapped around him, forcing his hands down, the empty blaster clattering to the floor. His back hit a warm chassis, a bigger frame pressed against him.
“It’s dead,” Megatron repeated against his audial, the purr of his engine soft compared to the arrhythmic revving of Ratchet’s own. “It’s not a danger to anything anymore.”
Ratchet’s vents heaved. Dots danced in his visual feed until he reset his optics. His hands felt cold and sticky. The stench of burnt fluid hung heavy in the air.
The creature lay crumpled in the beams of his headlights, a pulpy mass of flesh and bone and metal. Fluids seeped out of it – the telltale sludge of doubly processed energon and other liquids Ratchet couldn’t identify. He didn’t even know if it was organic, robotic, or some profane mix of the two.
Cables strewn limply across the floor. The mouth – agape – was full of teeth, but they could not have been what caused the bites. Perhaps the cables then. It was smaller than Ratchet expected, about the size of a minibot. In his terror, he’d imagined it larger.
It was very much dead.
Ratchet sagged into Megatron’s embrace, his optics half-shuttering. “Primus,” he breathed, and cycled several unsteady ventilations.
He hated himself for taking comfort in Megatron’s arms. But more than that, he didn’t want to pull away.
“It’s all right,” Megatron murmured.
“I know it is,” Ratchet snapped. He’d lived through a centuries long war. A little beast in the dark should not have startled him.
“Even the strongest of us, react violently when cornered.” Megatron stroked down Ratchet’s side, his field warm and soothing against Ratchet’s. “It’s only in the heat of the moment when our true selves are revealed.”
Ratchet wriggled out of the embrace, shame and anger burning a hot-cold fire through his lines. Megatron had to ruin it, didn’t he?
“Don’t lecture me,” he spat as he tugged a mesh cloth out of his subspace and wiped his hands free. “Don’t use this opportunity to prove a point.”
“You think of me as a monster.” Megatron’s gaze was steady. Splashes of fluids were painted garishly on his arms where he’d held Ratchet. “You see my actions as those of a mindless creature bent on destruction, acting only in rage, in fear. Maybe the latter is true.” He looked at the remains of the beast. “That doesn’t always mean it’s wrong.”
Ratchet growled. His face heated. He tossed the soiled cloth onto the floor, to join the rest of the mess. No one cared anyway.
“Fine,” he said, and was alarmed to find his voice unsteadier than he liked. His fragging hands wouldn’t stop fragging shaking either. “I’ll give you that much. Now can we get the frag out of here already?”
Megatron turned away from him. “It wouldn’t bother me in the least. This place has nothing but madness and ghosts.”
“And if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to avoid both.” Ratchet stomped to the door, glad at least to hear Megatron following him. “We need to find the others, too. Warn them that there might be energy eaters lurking around.”
He paused to wait for Megatron to catch up. For some reason, the former warlord was lingering by the corpse, giving it an odd look.
“It did not attack until we initiated the download,” Megatron commented and started toward Ratchet with a shake of his head. “One wonders why. Did the knights employ them as guardians?”
“I doubt they’re that trainable.” Ratchet’s headlights swept over Megatron as he got closer, and his optics widened. “Are you bleeding?”
Megatron grunted as he wrenched the main door open and held it aside. “For future reference, the beasts have a barbed, prehensile tail.”
Ratchet hadn’t noticed the tail. Given the flattened mess he’d made of the body, and the twisting coils of tentacles, he hadn’t paid attention to the rest.
“Primus.” Ratchet spooled his cable back into his compartment and moved to Megatron’s side, taking Megatron’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get upstairs so I can patch you up.”
“It barely counts as a wound.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Ratchet didn’t ventilate easier until they were three levels up and back in the lobby. He closed all the doors so they’d have some warning if more of the energy eaters attacked, and then he dragged a chair over, making Megatron sit on it.
“You’re too tall,” he grumbled as he examined the puncture wound in Megatron’s side. It steadily leaked energon, but Megatron was right. His self-repair should seal the tears soon enough. For now, a quick patch would do.
“I’m as tall as I need to be,” Megatron retorted. “Did you get the information you sought?”
Ratchet checked the download progress. He’d forgotten all about it. “Eighty-three percent.” He pulled out his medkit and got to work. “It’s enough to tell me what I want to know, though I suspect in the end, I’ll wish I hadn’t been so curious.”
“Do you think the residents here are responsible for the creatures?”
“No. I think they existed long before the knights came here.” Ratchet sopped up leaking fluids and slapped on the static mesh. “What were you thinking? Attacking that thing with no weapons, idiot. A few more centimeters and it could have gotten your fuel pump or your spark.”
Megatron gave him a baleful look. “Considering you went after it with a stool and a computer monitor, I don’t think you have any room to talk.”
“I had a blaster.”
“Which you lost.”
Ratchet snorted. “That’s not the point. Besides, you didn’t answer my question.” Mesh tape went over and around the edges of the static bandage, sealing it. The patch was ugly, but he’d worry about prettying it up later.
“If you have to ask why I attacked when I did, then maybe you’re right, there is nothing between us after all.” Megatron turned his head away, gaze focused on the far wall.
Ratchet paused, his fingers smoothing the last of the tape into place. “I suppose I owe you an apology then.”
Megatron’s hands curled around his knees “You don’t owe me anything. That much has been made very clear.”
“Damn it, Megatron.” Ratchet stood up, and was barely as tall as Megatron seated. “Why can’t you--”
“Why can’t I ‘what’? What do you want me to say, medic?” Megatron whipped back toward Ratchet with eyes as dark as coalfire. “That this has become something I desire? That I dream of you in my recharge? That I wake reaching for a frame that isn’t there?”
Ratchet’s spark skipped a beat. “Would it be true?”
How far would Megatron go? How many lies would he offer? Was it all just a game? Ratchet didn’t know, and it pained him, that lack of certainty.
“Of course it is!” Megatron snarled and leapt to his feet, whirling away from Ratchet, showing him the long, harsh lines of his back. His hands hung at his sides, curled into light fists. “I did not plan for this. I did not anticipate this. Of all the scenarios I assumed, your presence belongs nowhere, and yet I still find myself trying to fit you into a plan I do not have!”
Ratchet swallowed over a lump in his throat. He packed away his medkit, his face hot, and his hands trembling.
He didn’t know the truth of anything anymore. He did, however, know that he couldn’t let things lie. Not as he’d left them before. Too much sizzled between them. It was a weakness either way.
“We need to talk,” he said quietly.
“The last time you said such a thing to me, it ended poorly.”
Ratchet focused on his packing. “I can’t say it will be different this time, not for sure, but what else do you have to lose?”
“You’ve already stripped me of my dignity. I suppose there’s nothing left.” Megatron glanced over his shoulder, his expression so neutral it might as well have been carved from stone. “Let’s go, medic. Before Rodimus decides to leave us behind.”
Ratchet stuffed his medkit back into his subspace and followed Megatron out the door. He left the rest of the ghosts behind.
~
Universe: IDW MTMTE Season Two, Hot to Trot sequel, Between the Lines series
Characters: Ratchet/Megatron, Rodimus, Ultra Magnus, Rung, Ravage, Bluestreak, Perceptor
Rating: M
Enticements: Sticky Sex, BDSM themes, Bondage, Dom/Sub Themes, BDSM Education, Trust Issues, Angst, Vampires/Energy Eaters, mentions of torture, canon-typical violence, the LL always finds trouble
Description: What Megatron and Ratchet are to each other is a matter up for debate, one that gets a little tangled when the Lost Light stumbles into an unexpected complication.
Commission for Larry Draws
“The planet’s charted as 18835.113, but the locals call it Clandestine,” Broadside, their current navigator, explained as the planet loomed in front of them, perfectly spherical with barely any atmosphere to speak of. “It’s pretty barren according to our sensors – no local wildlife of the flora or fauna variety. But we have detected Cybertronian signals coming from the southern hemisphere.”
Ratchet hung back from the crowd as the command trio clustered around the main screen, their attention caught by Clandestine as it grew closer. They were heading toward the source of the Cybertronian signals no doubt. Straight into danger, as it were, which came as no surprise.
He folded his arms and stared over their heads at the rust-gray lands of Clandestine. Not a spot of fluid he could see. Nothing to indicate rivers or lakes or oceans or seas. It looked cracked and empty, like it was about to split apart at any moment.
What a terrible place to build a colony. What had brought the knights here? Why this planet? What made it a good choice?
“It’s kind of ugly, isn’t it?”
In his peripherals, Bluestreak was visible stepping up beside him. He nudged Ratchet with a playful elbow.
“But I guess we aren’t here for the sights.” He grinned, his optics dancing with amusement, and his hand slid around Ratchet’s lower back, teasing a seam.
Ratchet ignored the slight frisson of pleasure. “You volunteering for this fool’s expedition?” he asked. He would, of course, be going. Someone had to keep the idiots alive.
Bluestreak snorted. “No. I’m staying right here. Vampires are of no interest to me. Now if we find another port like Quartex, that’s a different story.” He winked and dipped a playful finger against Ratchet’s spinal strut. “I just came up here to check on you.”
Heat filtered into Ratchet’s face. He ignored it. “I’m fine,” he said, more gruffly than he meant. “Appreciate you helping an old, drunk mech back to his room though. If I’d passed out in Swerve’s, I’d have woken up with all manner of designs on my armor.”
He’d seen them do it to others before. Sometimes, the mech was lucky and the lewd phrases and pictures washed off in the racks. Sometimes, the prank was a bit more sinister, and it required paint stripper.
“Just returning the favor.” Bluestreak leaned against Ratchet’s side, sharing warmth, his field flooding Ratchet’s with affection. “I meant though, if you’re okay about what led to your evening of poor choices.”
Ratchet sighed, his optics straying to the front, where the command trio argued amongst themselves about something. Rodimus, no doubt, demanded something ill-advised. Ultra Magnus cautioned they tread lightly. Megatron was caught between them, somehow a mix of both, aggravation painted in the lines of his face as he pinched at the bridge of his nose.
“You sent Rung, didn’t you?” Ratchet asked.
Bluestreak giggled. “I might have mentioned to him that you were in need of some company in the morning.” He leaned harder against Ratchet’s side. “Plus I knew you needed someone to put things in perspective, given what you let slip.”
Ratchet looked at Bluestreak, who had the most innocent expression Ratchet didn’t believe for a moment. “I’m surprised you didn’t leave my traitorous aft in the middle of a hallway.”
“Nothing you’ve done qualifies as a betrayal.” Bluestreak tilted his head, resting his chin on Ratchet’s shoulder. “Just because I’ve got resentment boiling inside of me for centuries, doesn’t mean I’m going to hate you for knowing how to move forward. Besides, if it weren’t for his history, I’d say you two are actually well matched.”
The heat turned into an inferno. Ratchet knew if he looked into a mirror, it would be visible in the dermal layer of his face.
He tore his attention away from Bluestreak, back to the arguing trio, but that was no better choice, because Megatron picked that moment to look their direction. His expression was unreadable, but there was heat in his optics. It was only when his gaze slid to Bluestreak that something flickered over his face before he abruptly turned his attention back to Rodimus, who was dancing with what was, no doubt, a victory.
“Mmm, and I think someone’s a little jealous,” Bluestreak added with a laugh. “Or maybe he’s remembering the warning I gave him.”
“Warning? What? Bluestreak--”
“Oh, it’s fine.” Bluestreak squeezed his arm and lifted up, winking at Ratchet. “You know how it is, Ratchet. I always look after my own, especially when dangerous former warlords take it upon themselves to put hands where they shouldn’t.”
Ratchet rubbed at his face. “I’m not even sure, at this point, if I should be grateful or offended.”
“Grateful,” Bluestreak murmured and planted a kiss on Ratchet’s cheek. “Go have fun on your expedition. You better come back alive.”
“I’ll try.”
Bluestreak chuckled and then he was gone, taking the warmth and comfort of his field with him.
Ratchet sighed and lowered his hand.
Megatron was looking at him again, expression unreadable, but his optics hot. Ratchet shivered, something crawling down his spinal strut. Something a lot like want and need.
He spun on a heelstrut and stomped toward the medical bay. They’d be landing soon, and he wanted to make sure his mobile medkit was fully stocked. Primus only knew what they’d find on Clandestine, and Ratchet wanted to be prepared.
If he felt Megatron’s gaze on his back, Ratchet pretended otherwise.
Clandestine housed a colony so large it had a landing pad for a ship the Lost Light’s size. Which meant they wouldn’t have to cram into the Rodpod, a fact which disappointed Rodimus and relieved everyone else. Instead, they set the Lost Light down on the runway. They weren’t lacking for space.
Rodimus announced a free-for-all. Anyone could disembark if they wanted.
“Just remember,” he’d said cheerfully. “Don’t wander too far because if we need to leave in a hurry, I don’t want to leave anyone behind.”
Not that Ratchet suspected Rodimus actually would, but some of the crew probably believed him. No matter. There were few who wanted to explore the ruins of a colony, especially one so quiet and still.
Rumors of the energy eaters, vampires as they’d been named despite Perceptor’s insistence otherwise, meant many of the crew preferred to stay aboard.
It was only about a dozen or so who chose to step foot on the dingy gray ground. Ratchet and Megatron were among them, of course. Perceptor and Brainstorm, who were both giddy in their own ways, and Nightbeat, whose optics shone with excitement at the possibility of solving a mystery. Rodimus, with Ultra Magnus looming over him like he intended to protect their often reckless leader. Skids and Nautica and Chromedome and Rewind, a little quartet of curiosity and guardian.
Buildings loomed in front of them, constructed of an odd mix of steel and stone, the latter shaped from the same gray particulate around them. The land was flat, with only a few rises in either direction, and a pair of suns shone down at them from opposite directions, their illumination distant and pale.
He felt the chill in the air. No wonder there was no organic life. There was nothing to sustain it here.
The landing strip was empty of ship. Docking clamps suggested there had been vessels here once. Ratchet suspected that they’d all launched when the energy eaters attacked. One of them might have even housed the scout ship they’d found once.
Ratchet went his own way from the group. They scattered throughout the ruins, though maybe ruins was the wrong word. The buildings weren’t dilapidated, just abandoned. They showed a few signs of wear – cracked foundations, fading paint, rusted metal – but nothing worse than the buildings in the slums.
The silence was eerie.
Even more so when he took the main street down the center of the settlement where paved roads covered in grit crunched beneath his feet. The first crumpled frame startled him, made his spark pound in his chassis. A cursory examination revealed the mech was dead, and had been for quite some time. He swept a portable UV light over it, and found the telltale bites of an energy eater.
Multiple ones. Like he’d been overrun by a horde of them, perhaps drained dry in a matter of seconds.
It was horrifying.
In that moment, Ratchet wished he hadn’t set off into the settlement on his own. Every quiet creak, quiet whisper of sound, put him on edge.
He rose from his crouch and peered down the street. More frames lay scattered across the ground, limbs twisted in a vain attempt at escape. He suspected that if he swept his light over all of them, he’d find something similar. It was as if a horde of energy-eaters had descended on Clandestine.
Ratchet moved into the nearest building, wondering what horror awaited him inside. It couldn’t be worse than the bodies strewn in the streets.
He found himself in a lobby. A small desk crouched at the front and numbered boxes lined the walls to the left and right. Sloped ramps curved to either side of the desk, leading upward to a second level. An apartment complex perhaps?
More belongings scattered across the floor from those who’d fled in a hurry. There were blaster marks in the walls, cuts as well, evidence of bladed weapons.
A gray frame sat behind the desk, twisted in agony, bite marks visible in a sweep of UV light, some larger than others. It was the first frame Ratchet had seen with any kind of alt-mode kibble. Landing skids and blades suggested a rotary.
A dull thunk echoed from the back of the building.
Ratchet went still.
They’d yet to decide what exactly the energy eaters looked like. It was impossible to tell from the bite alone, and though there were many theories, no one knew for sure. Perceptor had found several old records, but even those had been vague and inconsistent.
The prevailing theory was that they had multiple limbs, multiple mouths, and likely, multiple sucker-like tentacles. Perceptor theorized they were the size of minibots at the least, given the size of the mechs they’d consumed.
Seeing the corpses on Clandestine, however, Ratchet wanted to revisit that theory. Perhaps they were small, like scraplets.
Another thump-rattled rose from the back of the building, through a door to the left of the right rampwell. It was louder this time, as though made by a larger beast.
Then again, maybe they came in a variety of deadly sizes.
Ratchet popped open his thigh compartment and pulled out his handgun. It had half a charge. Hopefully, that would be enough.
He should have grabbed another cartridge.
He had two options. He could make a run for it, or he could investigate. One was a distinctly Rodimus thing to do. The other would not answer any questions they had about what happened to the colony.
Ratchet glanced at the exit, back toward the door, and made his decision. He crept around the desk, hip against the edge of it, and slid toward the exit.
The far door burst open, the bottom edge screeching across the floor. Ratchet whirled toward it, spark thumping wildly. In the midst of a cloud of dust and noise, Ratchet heard coughing, and a large frame emerged. He lifted his gun to fire but a voice stayed his hand.
“That lock should not have been so strong!”
Large hands waved through the dust as Megatron came into view, face pinched with annoyance, his plating streaked in grime. He grumbled and kicked the door, and only then did he notice Ratchet.
Who was pointing a gun at him.
Megatron frowned and stared at him. “Are you so disgusted by our relationship that we’re back to the point where you feel the need to point a gun at me?”
Ratchet scowled. “I thought you were one of the creatures.” He tucked the gun back into his thigh. “What were you doing?”
“Investigating. Same as you.” Megatron came further into the room, peering into the shadows and nooks and crannies, as Ratchet had done earlier. “Ah, an apartment complex. I suspect we’ll find nothing but more ghosts.”
“That’s because there’s nothing here that’s any good for any of us,” Ratchet snapped, trying to soothe his ruffled armor and failing. His hands shook for Primus’ sake.
He’d survived the Cybertronian war. Why did this set him so badly on edge?
Ratchet turned his back on Megatron and stalked to the exit. “I’m moving on.”
“Shall I join you?”
Ratchet paused in the door frame – the remains of the thick transsteel crunched beneath his feet. The energon-eaters had probably burst through it.
“If it means you won’t scare the living daylights out of me again, by all means, join me,” Ratchet said, hoping he sounded sufficiently glib and not desperate.
It must have worked.
Megatron followed him out the door, and they started further down the main thoroughfare. The entire settlement followed an orderly architecture, with all streets leading toward the center. A low wall and massive flagpoles were visible in the distance.
Ratchet didn’t know what was more uncomfortable, the absence of life around them or the tense silence between Megatron and himself.
Clandestine carried the silence of a battlefield, after the last shot had been fired and retreat had been called, but there was little evidence of war. Had the entire city been overrun in a matter of seconds? Had the inhabitants no opportunity to save themselves?
They’d fled for their lives. The attack must have come upon them suddenly. Purchases lay strewn in the streets. Doors were wide open if they weren’t shattered. Some had been attacked mid-flight, left to die in the roads, their frames locked in agony and desperation, reaching for escape.
It was silent. There wasn’t even a breeze to stir the thin mesh flags hanging limp from their poles, their colors dulled by time and exposure.
Ratchet drew closer Megatron before he realized what he was doing and forced himself away. He had to break the eerie quiet before he went mad.
“Drift would’ve made some comment about how the aura of this place is drab and echoing with loss,” Ratchet muttered.
He wasn’t sure why his thoughts kept turning to Drift as of late. Perhaps because of the truth Rodimus had revealed. Or because Megatron’s presence was too much like Drift’s had been – a former Decepticon in their midst.
Megatron snorted. “That does not sound like the Deadlock I knew.”
Ratchet gave him a sidelong look, and if it lingered on the stolen Autobot badge on Megatron’s chassis, that was more the point. “Sometimes, mechs change.”
Megatron abruptly paused and crouched beside a gray frame, collapsed facedown on the sidewalk. “Not like that, they don’t,” he said, and rolled the corpse over.
Like many of the others, this one had no discernible alt-mode. No wheels. No wings. No tracks. Nothing.
Was it a city of mostly monoformers? Was that why they had built this pseudo-colony so far from all the others? Were they less Knights of Cybertron and more of an offshoot?
It seemed all they were finding were more mysteries.
Ratchet stared down at his former lover and crossed his arms. “You know, funny you should say that, given your current circumstances.”
“I am who I’ve always been.” Megatron rose to his full height, limbs creaking, sounding more like he were Ratchet’s age with every movement. “I’m only reclaiming myself. I was not sparked a killer. None of us were.”
“And yet look what you’ve made us.” Ratchet’s shoulders hunched, a chill creeping under his armor. If it was the atmosphere or his own rapidly beating spark to blame, he didn’t know.
They moved forward, their feet crunching over the ground, the noise echoing in the still quiet. Where the others had gone, Ratchet didn’t know. Behind them, the Lost Light loomed over the settlement, a guardian too many centuries too late.
“That was out of necessity,” Megatron replied at length. His gaze swept the roadway and the sidewalks.
He searched for something. Or perhaps he was counting the fallen, comparing it to some internal metric. Too few for a battle, too many for an accident.
Ratchet was guilty of the same cataloguing.
“It was out of fear,” Ratchet countered, and dared Megatron to argue otherwise. He hadn’t meant to embroil them in a philosophical discussion, but maybe it was inevitable.
It had been simmering between them from the moment Ratchet showed up at Megatron’s hab to end things. Or perhaps earlier than that. From the third time Ratchet ended up in Megatron’s berth and realized he wanted to keep trying.
Megatron turned to face him, and Ratchet should have continued without him, but he didn’t. They were on the precipice of something here. A culmination of the twisting, churning emotions thick between them for the past couple of weeks.
“Are not most desperate actions born of fear?” Megatron asked.
Ratchet twisted his jaw. “I don’t think Drift’s turn to Autobot was because of fear,” he ground out.
Though whether or not Drift’s defection was his own choice was still a matter up for debate, in Ratchet’s opinion. Oh, he felt Drift’s defection was sincere, but he was well aware Drift had the tendency to suborn himself to a stronger influence when the chance arose.
Megatron rolled his optics. “Of course it was,” he said, with the caustic tone of someone speaking to another who was particularly stupid. “Just as I’ve always been a disposable, raging against my cage, Drift or Deadlock or whoever he calls himself, will always be a mech desperate to belong.”
Ratchet almost flinched. That Megatron had so correctly diagnosed Drift hinted of a stronger relationship in their past, stronger than Drift had ever let on.
“Then what am I?” Ratchet demanded. “Since you’re so attuned to a mech’s secret desires and all.”
Megatron’s optics softened. “You,” he said, “are always trying to save someone. Except in the process, you tend to forget that sometimes, you need saving, too.”
Like a blaster shot to the spark. It wasn’t right, how accurate Megatron was. Like he could peel apart a mech’s chassis and rifle through their spark layers.
Ratchet snorted and stared hard at a building nearby, rusting on its foundation. “If that were true, I wouldn’t have a single spark on my hands. And I wouldn’t have betrayed every vow I ever took.”
“Necessity often trumps personal choice.”
“That sounds like an excuse.”
Megatron audibly cycled a ventilation. “It will always sound like an excuse, no matter what I say or claim,” he said. “You’re like the others, those who eventually tell me all the ways I should have responded, rather than addressing those who caused the hurt.”
Ratchet’s mouth snapped shut. He felt, more than heard, the accusation in Megatron’s tone. Blame the victim, Megatron all but screamed at him. Blame me for reacting to pain and misery.
Guilt clawed into his intake, and Ratchet swallowed it down. He would not be shamed into defending Megatron’s actions. “There are explanations, and there are excuses. Don’t confuse the two,” he snapped. “I never said you didn’t have reason. Your methods were lacking, yeah, but never your reason.”
“That’s the thing about it, Ratchet.” Megatron took a step closer to him, not out of threat, but so he could lower his voice, somehow make this conversation more intimate. “No method would have ever been safe enough. No method would have brought quicker results while mechs like me were dying, were murdered. There’s a point where I went too far, I know that now, it’s why I made the choice I made. But I will never stand here and tell you that every choice I made was wrong.”
It would be so easy to lie and cast the first stone.
But Ratchet knew Megatron was right. Down to the smallest flicker of his spark, he knew Megatron had a point. Peaceful resistance would have only been quashed by the Senate faster than it could be built. If Megatron hadn’t built the Decepticons into what they were, Cybertron would have continued on its steady course toward destruction.
Maybe Megatron had only hastened that end. Maybe it was inevitable. Ratchet didn’t know. He wasn’t an economist, a socialist, a historian. He was just a medic. He fixed mechs. Repaired them. Healed them.
Do no harm.
And once upon a time, in the midst of war, he’d abandoned every last one of his vows to save his own spark, and the sparks of others. He’d killed. He’d maimed. He’d prioritized injuries. He’d sent his patients out to their deaths.
He’d made choices.
Most of them, he’d make all over again.
Ratchet cycled a ventilation and turned away from Megatron. “We should keep moving,” he said, his voice thin and reedy in the absence of ambient noise. “If we fall behind too much, Rodimus will gloat when he has to send out a search party.”
“And we can’t have that,” Megatron drawled. He shifted, gesturing ahead of them, his expression carefully blank. “Lead the way, doctor.”
Megatron let their discussion drop. How gracious of him. How indulgent. Or maybe, he was saving the venom for later.
It was impossible to know. Ratchet was no closer to understanding Megatron now, then he was before they fell into the berth together.
They walked in silence.
A familiar symbol came into view. Not the incomprehensible jargon of the knights, but one painted on Ratchet’s very own frame. It was a medical center. Perhaps he could find some information on the creatures that had led this colony to its destruction.
The front doors, made of clear transsteel, had been completely shattered, likely by a press of citizens fleeing their deaths. Ratchet altered his course, and Megatron moved to follow him.
The air sizzled with tension. Again, Ratchet didn’t know which was worse – this thing without a name or the taste of death in the air.
It was gloomy in the main lobby. There were fewer corpses than Ratchet would have expected, most of them pointed toward the door, as though they were running out of the hospital instead of into it. Not a good sign.
“Perhaps we should search elsewhere,” Megatron said.
“Are you afraid?” Ratchet asked as he took the first open door, pushing it fully aside with a creak of rusty hinges. More dim and gloom greeted him.
The ceilings were low, only a handsbreath from the top of his head, which meant Megatron had to stoop to fit. Given the relative size of the corpses, Ratchet was not surprised. These knights seemed to be smaller as a rule.
“Fear is not the word I would use,” Megatron muttered. His crunched over the detritus littering the floor. “There is something unsettling about abandoned medcenters. Always has been.”
Ratchet snorted. “Never took you for the superstitious sort.” A set of double doors squeaked open, depositing them into what appeared to be an operating theater. An oddly positioned one, no less. This was not how Ratchet would have designed a medcenter.
There were no corpses here. Nothing but immaculate surgical equipment layered in dust. There was another set of doors beyond, probably recovery rooms. Some of the equipment wasn’t recognizable or crude compared to what Ratchet employed.
“Superstition and caution often go hand in hand,” Megatron said, his voice echoing in the abandoned room. “Barring that, I’ve found that medical buildings are not always places of comfort.”
Ratchet thought of Pharma, of Delphi, and he had to concede Megatron’s point.
He pushed through double doors on the far end, one hanging from a single hinge. It was indeed a recovery room, with two long rows of cubicles to either side. Curiously each had a locked door and the wall facing the corridor was windowed. Most were empty.
Two were not.
Ratchet did not know what happened to the mech in the first room, but the corpse resembled nothing like the others. This one appeared to have been… masticated, for lack of a better word. Torn plating, limbs at odd angles, wires hanging free, a look of agony on a face largely stripped of dermal plating.
Ratchet hurried on, nausea churning in his tanks.
“What in Primus’ name is that?” Megatron demanded from behind him.
“Primus had nothing to do with whatever happened in that room,” Ratchet said. If he were at all religious, he would have said a prayer.
The next was even worse. The door hung slightly open as if inviting Ratchet to investigate further, and he stepped through as if on auto-pilot. The corpse was a balled heap on the floor, as if turned inside out, and evidence of scorch streaking across his visible armor.
He looked like someone who had been made to transform over and over again, perhaps as a form of punishment. Perhaps he’d contracted a virus.
Ratchet crouched by the poor mech. He had tires – not a monoformer. The edge of a transformation circuit peeked out from the remains of the mech’s abdomen, and it was a blackened, half-melted mess.
T-cog burn out indeed. Perhaps that was what had happened to the other as well. Ratchet wouldn’t know for sure without an autopsy, but this mech looked to have suffered enough. He swept the corpse with the UV light.
No bites.
Megatron stepped up behind him. “And this one?”
“I’m not sure,” Ratchet admitted, dread churning in his tanks.
The amount of monoformers. The unusual, almost tortured frame here and in the previous room. The energy eaters themselves. He didn’t like it.
Ratchet ground his denta. “But it definitely doesn’t look a frag thing like someone was trying to help him.”
He pushed to his feet, spinning back toward the way they came.
“I need to find the records room.” Ratchet pushed past Megatron, his spark feeling heavier and heavier in his chassis. To pervert a place of healing into this, it was unconscionable.
It was Pharma all over again.
“What are you talking about?” Megatron followed, and where before he had been making so much noise, he now moved with unnatural silence for a mech of his size.
“I have to know what they were doing here.”
Ratchet stormed back through the surgical ward and back into the main lobby. He found a rampwell that went down and took it. He wished the lifts worked, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“How do you know where it is?” Megatron didn’t have to follow, but he did. Ratchet didn’t want to think about what that meant.
He passed the exits for one level and then another. He kept going. The dark closed around them, as though it had physical shape, until Ratchet’s headlights and their biolights were the only thing to pierce it.
“Records are always kept in the basement,” Ratchet said. Or at least he hoped that Clandestine’s medcenter followed the standard construction. “In every hospital, on every planet, for every species I’ve ever visited, the records room has always been in the basement.”
The rampwell ended at a single door. Plain. Locked with a physical key, but the lock so rusted it only took a single kick to send the door bursting inward. His headlights illuminated a vast space empty of corpses. But then, who would flee to the basement where there was no escape?
“What do you think you’re going to find?”
“Answers.”
Ratchet couldn’t see the far wall because his headlights did not reach that far. But there were rows of personal consoles, no doubt for the data workers to sit and toil away, processing numerous lines of diagnostic code. They would have managed and maintained the records, cataloging, keytagging, et cetera.
Ratchet picked the nearest one and yanked out the stool, sitting down in it with a creak of ancient hydraulics.
“Ratchet, there’s no power,” Megatron said.
Ratchet jerked a handful of cables out of his wrist compartment and flicked through them, relieved to find that one to fit these ancient ports. Some things were still universal. He plugged into the computer and initiated a power surge, like jumping a dead battery.
The computer whirred to life.
“You can’t do that indefinitely,” Megatron warned him.
“I don’t need long,” Ratchet said as the screen flickered to life. “I want to copy the hard drive. I can’t even read their language. I’ll need Rewind for that. But I won’t leave until I have something to tell me what they were doing here.”
The filing system didn’t want to cooperate. It didn’t recognize him as a registered user. It kept throwing up firewalls.
Ratchet responded with permission codes, every single one he had in his archives, including one Optimus had given him, until the computer finally relented with a whimper. It allowed him access to the core system. He started copying.
“Why does it matter to you?”
Ratchet’s free hand rested on the desk, curling into a fist. The flicker of the transfer reflected back at him, the computer humming and whirring. “Because what I saw up there was not healing. It was torture.”
Megatron’s field spiked with unease.
“Haven’t you wondered why this settlement is so far from all the other coordinates? Why it’s the opposite direction from the Matrix map?” Ratchet watched the progress bar, counting down until he could disconnect. He felt dirty just being plugged into it, as if the horror could infect him somehow.
“I have. I’d assumed it was because the Knights were determined to colonize every sector of the galaxy.” Megatron scuffed the floor as he turned away, perhaps to investigate another corner of the records room.
Like the Decepticons once did? Ratchet thought, rather snide, but he kept it to himself. His unease made him snappish. He wanted to get out of here. His armor crawled, his spark beat faster, and he could have sworn something watched him from the dark, beyond where his headlights could reach.
“I don’t think that’s it,” Ratchet said, letting his voice fill the quiet rather than the echoing nothing. “I think they’re out here because they were exiled from the knights. Extremists maybe. I think that they are monoformers, so radicalized they disdained any alt-mode, even if it wasn’t their own.”
“Fanatics.” Megatron vented noisily. “Wonderful.”
“You’d know,” Ratchet muttered. Hadn’t Megatron worked very hard to create fanatical worshipers of his own?
Something whispered into the dark, a susurrus of sound that didn’t belong. Ratchet went still. The download continued, pushing past seventy-eight percent.
“What was that?” Ratchet asked, half-risen from his stool, his free hand on his thigh compartment.
“I heard nothing,” Megatron replied. His voice came from opposite the sound, perhaps to far to catch the whisper-quiet noise.
Shhh-hsssss-tmp.
There it was again. Ratchet’s head turned to the left, optics searching the dark, sensors straining. His spark pounded so hard it echoed in his audials.
“That I heard,” Megatron said.
“We’re not alone.” Ratchet’s fingers closed around his blaster.
Something burst out of the dark, something with fangs that gleamed in his headlights, and tentacles snapping out, aiming for Ratchet’s chassis. He fired, blaster lighting up the dark, making contact with the nauseating stench of burning organic, before the weapon was knocked out of his hands.
Frag.
Ratchet jerked back, but something wrapped around his other wrist, tugging him forward. He panicked as the stench of something dead, floated across his sensors. He twisted, yanking on the cable, reaching with his free hand for something, anything to use as a weapon.
“Ratchet!”
His fingers closed around the console, the monitor gleaming balefully at him. Ratchet grabbed and yanked, swinging it forward like a bludgeon, making contact. The thing holding him shrieked and hissed, an unearthly sound. Wetness splattered, hot and hissing, and Ratchet struck again and again. His cable jerked free of the computer, pulling the power supply, casting the basement into darkness save for the wild sweeps of his headlights. Whatever had him was long, tubular, like a dweller with multiple cables.
It didn’t matter what it looked like. Ratchet hit it again and again, trying to free his arm. He hooked the stool with his ankle and lobbed it at the beast. There was a dull, moist thud as it collided, and Ratchet’s arm was abruptly released.
He lost his balance and fell, hitting the ground hard. His head spun, processor working overtime. He heard a roar, didn’t know if it was Megatron or the monster. His headlights flickered. Something licked at the bottom of his feet. The handle of his handgun glinted in the flickering lights.
Ratchet snatched up his blaster and rolled to his back, firing blindly at the beast illuminated by the sweeps of his headlights. It roared and hissed, massive body rearing back as more scorched organic stink filled the air. It thrashed and a nearby desk clattered across the floor.
Ratchet lurched to his feet and snatched up the stool again, just as he heard a shout and a large thump. Something hit the ground hard, and Ratchet didn’t need light to know it was Megatron. He surged forward, lashing at the creature with his stool, firing blindly at the beast, pulling the trigger over and over again.
The monster keened, a horrendous noise. It flopped down, liquid spilling out of it, splashing over Ratchet’s feet. He kept firing. He didn’t know if the beast could pull itself together. He didn’t know if it could be killed. His blaster ran out of charge, his fingers ached on the trigger. The stench choked him.
“Ratchet! It’s dead!”
Arms wrapped around him, forcing his hands down, the empty blaster clattering to the floor. His back hit a warm chassis, a bigger frame pressed against him.
“It’s dead,” Megatron repeated against his audial, the purr of his engine soft compared to the arrhythmic revving of Ratchet’s own. “It’s not a danger to anything anymore.”
Ratchet’s vents heaved. Dots danced in his visual feed until he reset his optics. His hands felt cold and sticky. The stench of burnt fluid hung heavy in the air.
The creature lay crumpled in the beams of his headlights, a pulpy mass of flesh and bone and metal. Fluids seeped out of it – the telltale sludge of doubly processed energon and other liquids Ratchet couldn’t identify. He didn’t even know if it was organic, robotic, or some profane mix of the two.
Cables strewn limply across the floor. The mouth – agape – was full of teeth, but they could not have been what caused the bites. Perhaps the cables then. It was smaller than Ratchet expected, about the size of a minibot. In his terror, he’d imagined it larger.
It was very much dead.
Ratchet sagged into Megatron’s embrace, his optics half-shuttering. “Primus,” he breathed, and cycled several unsteady ventilations.
He hated himself for taking comfort in Megatron’s arms. But more than that, he didn’t want to pull away.
“It’s all right,” Megatron murmured.
“I know it is,” Ratchet snapped. He’d lived through a centuries long war. A little beast in the dark should not have startled him.
“Even the strongest of us, react violently when cornered.” Megatron stroked down Ratchet’s side, his field warm and soothing against Ratchet’s. “It’s only in the heat of the moment when our true selves are revealed.”
Ratchet wriggled out of the embrace, shame and anger burning a hot-cold fire through his lines. Megatron had to ruin it, didn’t he?
“Don’t lecture me,” he spat as he tugged a mesh cloth out of his subspace and wiped his hands free. “Don’t use this opportunity to prove a point.”
“You think of me as a monster.” Megatron’s gaze was steady. Splashes of fluids were painted garishly on his arms where he’d held Ratchet. “You see my actions as those of a mindless creature bent on destruction, acting only in rage, in fear. Maybe the latter is true.” He looked at the remains of the beast. “That doesn’t always mean it’s wrong.”
Ratchet growled. His face heated. He tossed the soiled cloth onto the floor, to join the rest of the mess. No one cared anyway.
“Fine,” he said, and was alarmed to find his voice unsteadier than he liked. His fragging hands wouldn’t stop fragging shaking either. “I’ll give you that much. Now can we get the frag out of here already?”
Megatron turned away from him. “It wouldn’t bother me in the least. This place has nothing but madness and ghosts.”
“And if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to avoid both.” Ratchet stomped to the door, glad at least to hear Megatron following him. “We need to find the others, too. Warn them that there might be energy eaters lurking around.”
He paused to wait for Megatron to catch up. For some reason, the former warlord was lingering by the corpse, giving it an odd look.
“It did not attack until we initiated the download,” Megatron commented and started toward Ratchet with a shake of his head. “One wonders why. Did the knights employ them as guardians?”
“I doubt they’re that trainable.” Ratchet’s headlights swept over Megatron as he got closer, and his optics widened. “Are you bleeding?”
Megatron grunted as he wrenched the main door open and held it aside. “For future reference, the beasts have a barbed, prehensile tail.”
Ratchet hadn’t noticed the tail. Given the flattened mess he’d made of the body, and the twisting coils of tentacles, he hadn’t paid attention to the rest.
“Primus.” Ratchet spooled his cable back into his compartment and moved to Megatron’s side, taking Megatron’s arm. “Come on. Let’s get upstairs so I can patch you up.”
“It barely counts as a wound.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Ratchet didn’t ventilate easier until they were three levels up and back in the lobby. He closed all the doors so they’d have some warning if more of the energy eaters attacked, and then he dragged a chair over, making Megatron sit on it.
“You’re too tall,” he grumbled as he examined the puncture wound in Megatron’s side. It steadily leaked energon, but Megatron was right. His self-repair should seal the tears soon enough. For now, a quick patch would do.
“I’m as tall as I need to be,” Megatron retorted. “Did you get the information you sought?”
Ratchet checked the download progress. He’d forgotten all about it. “Eighty-three percent.” He pulled out his medkit and got to work. “It’s enough to tell me what I want to know, though I suspect in the end, I’ll wish I hadn’t been so curious.”
“Do you think the residents here are responsible for the creatures?”
“No. I think they existed long before the knights came here.” Ratchet sopped up leaking fluids and slapped on the static mesh. “What were you thinking? Attacking that thing with no weapons, idiot. A few more centimeters and it could have gotten your fuel pump or your spark.”
Megatron gave him a baleful look. “Considering you went after it with a stool and a computer monitor, I don’t think you have any room to talk.”
“I had a blaster.”
“Which you lost.”
Ratchet snorted. “That’s not the point. Besides, you didn’t answer my question.” Mesh tape went over and around the edges of the static bandage, sealing it. The patch was ugly, but he’d worry about prettying it up later.
“If you have to ask why I attacked when I did, then maybe you’re right, there is nothing between us after all.” Megatron turned his head away, gaze focused on the far wall.
Ratchet paused, his fingers smoothing the last of the tape into place. “I suppose I owe you an apology then.”
Megatron’s hands curled around his knees “You don’t owe me anything. That much has been made very clear.”
“Damn it, Megatron.” Ratchet stood up, and was barely as tall as Megatron seated. “Why can’t you--”
“Why can’t I ‘what’? What do you want me to say, medic?” Megatron whipped back toward Ratchet with eyes as dark as coalfire. “That this has become something I desire? That I dream of you in my recharge? That I wake reaching for a frame that isn’t there?”
Ratchet’s spark skipped a beat. “Would it be true?”
How far would Megatron go? How many lies would he offer? Was it all just a game? Ratchet didn’t know, and it pained him, that lack of certainty.
“Of course it is!” Megatron snarled and leapt to his feet, whirling away from Ratchet, showing him the long, harsh lines of his back. His hands hung at his sides, curled into light fists. “I did not plan for this. I did not anticipate this. Of all the scenarios I assumed, your presence belongs nowhere, and yet I still find myself trying to fit you into a plan I do not have!”
Ratchet swallowed over a lump in his throat. He packed away his medkit, his face hot, and his hands trembling.
He didn’t know the truth of anything anymore. He did, however, know that he couldn’t let things lie. Not as he’d left them before. Too much sizzled between them. It was a weakness either way.
“We need to talk,” he said quietly.
“The last time you said such a thing to me, it ended poorly.”
Ratchet focused on his packing. “I can’t say it will be different this time, not for sure, but what else do you have to lose?”
“You’ve already stripped me of my dignity. I suppose there’s nothing left.” Megatron glanced over his shoulder, his expression so neutral it might as well have been carved from stone. “Let’s go, medic. Before Rodimus decides to leave us behind.”
Ratchet stuffed his medkit back into his subspace and followed Megatron out the door. He left the rest of the ghosts behind.
