[IDW] Lost and Lonely Space 06/12
Dec. 6th, 2018 06:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dracoqueen22a/n: Commission fic for Cosmicdanger!
Title: Lost and Lonely Space
Universe: IDW, Pre-Death of Optimus Prime
Characters: Ratchet, Deadlock, Alien Original Character(s)
Rating: M
Enticements: Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Canon Divergence
Description: While on a sabbatical from the war, Ratchet runs into a spot of trouble that lands him in close company with a familiar face, the famed Decepticon Deadlock.
chapter six
Deadlock tosses and turns on the berth, Ratchet’s sincere ‘thank you’ echoing in his audials. He’d expected more snarky comebacks, more implications of how much of a monster Deadlock had become. He’d expected Ratchet to press, to force the argument.
Once again, Ratchet has ignored his expectations.
It’s disconcerting.
There’s only so much recharge one can get, and right now, Deadlock is full up. But the idea of venturing out where Ratchet is very much online fills him with a mingling sense of dread and excitement. He doesn’t know which emotion bothers him more.
He folds his arms behind his head and stares at the ceiling, tracing the shape of a rust stain. It kind of looks like Soundwave’s head.
He wonders if the Decepticons are looking for him. Has anyone noticed he’s been out of contact for over a week? That the deal with the Pentas obviously went south? Or has Turmoil been hiding it? Probably tagged it as a failure on Deadlock’s end, blocking anyone from caring about it.
Megatron might. If anyone reminds him Deadlock’s assignment to Turmoil was only supposed to be temporary.
Starscream’s probably doing his best to make sure Megatron forgets.
Deadlock vents and scrapes a hand down his face. He’s in no hurry to get back to the Decepticon fold. Except, perhaps, to prove to Turmoil he’s very much alive and not to celebrate too soon. But he’s not in a hurry to return to war either. He’s good at what he does, killing and the like, but he doesn’t enjoy it.
He never has.
It’s necessary. At least, he tells himself this often enough if only to stave off the night purges. The violence and the killing, both are necessary, because they never would have found a path to freedom without it.
He hates having to confront those choices. He hates every little seed of doubt Ratchet plants in his mind, because being around the medic thrusts him back into the past, back to the leaker he’d been. It reminds him he’d had a choice, and he made his choice, but it could have been a different choice.
Deadlock hates it.
If he could get Ratchet out of here faster, back to the Autobots, somewhere away from Deadlock where he’s not a reminder and a question and a moral quandary – Deadlock would do it.
In a sparkbeat.
He doesn’t need the temptation. He doesn’t need Drift. Drift will die out here. He’s weak, and he’s considerate, and he’s not built to survive. Drift is a burden Deadlock will bury until the end of the war, if it ever comes.
Drift, if Deadlock’s lucky, will never see the sun again.
But Ratchet rips away Deadlock’s luck. The sight of him is a memory of gentle hands and encouraging words, perhaps not truly sparkfelt but there all the same. Ratchet gives Drift strength, and makes it harder for Deadlock to snarl and shoot him down.
Ratchet makes Drift want, and that just can’t stand.
Deadlock’s denta grit so hard he tastes sparks. He swears the silence gives room to sound, to the screaming in the back of his head. It gives Drift a voice he doesn’t deserve.
Deadlock can’t take it anymore. He heaves himself out of the berth and strides out of the room, feeling both antsy and ready to rumble. The edginess lingers, but the rattle-clank of his own movement, and the hissing-rattle of the crashed ship slowly going through its death-throes, helps chase away Drift’s whisper.
Deadlock’s not two steps out of the recharge room when Ratchet calls out to him, “I was thinking we need to go for a walk.”
Deadlock blinks and nearly misses a step at the almost congenial tone. He follows Ratchet’s voice to the table, where he’s got a thin piece of plastic spread out and is scribbling on it with a marker.
“A walk?” Deadlock repeats.
Ratchet marks something on the plastic, his expression intent and focused. “We left a trail of destruction behind us. If we follow the track, we might be able to find something we lost.”
For the life of him, Deadlock doesn’t know why that hasn’t occurred to him before.
He moves closer to the table, peering down at Ratchet’s work. As near as he can tell, it’s a crudely drawn map, with the crash site marked in blue and an approximation of their skid marked in long lines of black. Ratchet’s sketched out the landscape – the rise and fall of the craggy rocks around them. Possible points of wreckage impact are marked in green.
“Are you opposed or have you done this already, and I’m just wasting my time?”
Deadlock shakes his head. “Neither. I’m just annoyed I hadn’t thought of it before.”
“Yeah, well, that makes two of us.” Ratchet grins, and there’s nothing but amusement in it. “The good thing is, we can’t possibly get lost. The bad thing is--”
“--we don’t know what’s out there,” Deadlock finishes for him. “But to be fair, we’ve been here for over a week, and nothing’s come near to investigate yet. We’re probably safe.”
Ratchet snorts. “Talk about a relative term.” He straightens, arms pulling over his head in a stretch, hydraulics and cables creaking.
Deadlock absolutely isn’t looking or anything. He directs his gaze at the hand-drawn map instead. “We’ll need to exchange actual comm codes if you want to communicate.” Narrow band comms won’t cut it for a long-distance excursion.
“Yeah, I’d thought about it.” A datachip appears in front of him, blocking off a portion of the map. “Here’s mine.”
Deadlock accepts it and slots it into place with a tiny click. “What? You don’t trust me to cable up? I’m hurt, Ratchet. Truly.”
Ratchet rolls his optics. “Sure you are.” He holds out a hand, fingers wriggling. “Well?”
Fishing out a comm chip, Deadlock hands it over and watches Ratchet install it. He waits a moment and then taps on the comm line, just to see if Ratchet can respond. He gets his answer when the medic huffs.
“I can hear you,” Ratchet grumps. It shouldn’t be so endearing, but it kind of is. Ratchet’s gruff is a frag of a lot nicer than Hook’s grump. That’s for damn sure.
“Just checking.” Deadlock grins. “You want to go now, or do you need a nap first?”
Ratchet scowls. “Shut up.” He focuses on the map for a second longer, probably taking a capture of it, and then moves to the door. “Come on. Help me open this so we can go.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” Deadlock fires off a jaunty salute.
He doesn’t know what it says about him that he’s amused by Ratchet’s optic roll.
They each grab one side of the door, fingers slotting into grooves where they’ve done this time and time again, and pull. With a grating, grinding screech, the bay doors slide open with enough space for them to squeeze out one at a time.
Deadlock takes a moment to orient himself. Illumination is sketchy at best, with the nearest light-providing sun lightyears away, and various floating asteroids interrupting the path between its rays and the surface of the asteroid. There’s enough refracted light to provide some visibility, but thank Primus for peripheral and regional sensors. Otherwise they’d be walking, or apparently driving as Ratchet’s just transformed, blind.
The terrain is just solid enough Deadlock’s wheels don’t spin uselessly when he, too, transforms. He takes up the rear, following the track of their crash back the way they came. He’s got his sensors trained outward, hoping to ping back a material that doesn’t match the local stone.
The silence is oppressive. Deadlock doesn’t really think of the Decepticon mobile command base as home, but it’s the closest thing he has to one, and the Nemesis is always noisy. There’s no graveyard shift. It’s always fully staffed and ready to respond to an Autobot incursion or assault at a moment’s notice.
It’s like sleeping on the streets, and there’s no sweeter lullaby than the rattle and clank of a thousand mechs in motion, the industries chugging and churning out their products, the riotous murmur of a thousand voices arguing and talking and loving and losing. The hiss and squeak of pipes filling the air, the stench of the perfumed and the unwashed, and the rusting and the brand new.
His comm crackles to life.
“You want to tell me?”
Deadlock would have blinked, if he were in root mode. “Don’t remember you askin’ a question.”
“Why the Decepticons?” Ratchet asks, as though they’ve been in the middle of a conversation that’s been interrupted.
He stares hard at Ratchet’s taillights. Ratchet’s tone is too casual to be believed. “Pretty sure we’ve already discussed that particular question. It’s not my fault you don’t find my answers acceptable.”
“I meant that you had so much potential. I hate that instead it’s turned into this.”
Deadlock scoffs into the line. “You don’t know anything about me. How would you know what potential I had?” He revs his engine, in lieu of scowling at the mech. “Just because you disapprove of my choices, doesn’t mean they’re the wrong ones.”
“Then tell me.”
“What?”
“You said I don’t know anything about you. Enlighten me then.”
Deadlock would squint, if he could. “Why? What’s the point? You’re not going to get me to defect, and I don’t think you honestly care.”
For a moment, there’s silence. Across the comm and in the world around them. Deadlock feels the crunch of the rock and grit beneath his tires, but he can’t hear it. They’ve passed small bits of the ship, bolts and tiny petals of the hull, but nothing useful, nothing worth stopping to scoop up.
“There was a time Megatron and Orion Pax held the same goals,” Ratchet finally says, his words crackling as though thick with static. “Autobots and Decepticons could have fought as one, rather than against each other. Somehow, somewhere, our paths diverged.”
So it is to be a political debate then?
Well. At least it’ll fill the silence.
“There’s a fundamental difference in our lives,” Deadlock says, drawing heavily on ‘Toward Peace’ because it has become the framework of his understanding. “Orion Pax was too content to let people suffer and die while he took the long path of diplomacy, attempting to convince mechs who didn’t want to listen. I didn’t want to die. And there were many like me, who didn’t want to be the collateral damage on that road.”
“And yet the killing continues.”
“You can’t expect someone who’s finally found freedom, to give it up and bow to the rules again.” Deadlock sends a dark chuckle through the comm. “The Tyrant is dead! Here are your new leaders, same flavor as the old, but don’t worry, they’re better. We promise. Don’t forget your rulebook on the way out.”
“So it’s anarchy you want then.”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” Deadlock bites out, anger curling low and heavy around his spark. “I prefer to think of it as living without the weight of unjust laws dragging you into the pit.”
“Who decides the law then?”
“What?”
Ratchet’s voice comes through, insufferably patient. “You don’t want the absence of law, you simply want the existing law to be fair. Therefore, who gets to decide what’s just and unjust?”
Deadlock’s engine revs again. There’s a hot-cold sensation twisting and churning in his gut. He wants to scream as much as he wants to hit something. Ratchet’s baiting him, he’s sure of it.
It’s not going to fragging work.
He slams on the brakes and launches out of alt-mode, feet skidding across the ground in the middle of the crash-track, bringing him to a halt. Dirt and rocks ping against his shins, but it’s nothing compared to the dust choking his air and now his vents.
Ahead of him, Ratchet’s brake lights flare red, and then Ratchet transforms as well, the distance between them the length of a mech’s stride or two, but it might as well be a chasm.
“The will of the people,” Deadlock says as Ratchet turns to face him. Toward Peace serves him well, in this moment. “Not the command of one. A mech should choose his own fate. Let it be dictated by his choices, not the circumstances which birthed him. It’s not that complicated.”
“Choices,” Ratchet echoes, and his optics go dark. “You speak of choices, and yet when given the opportunity, you ran toward one of violence and death. You chose to spill the energon of your fellow mechs, some of whom fought against the very thing you hated.”
Deadlock sneers, lips pulled back over his denta. “I chose to fight. I chose not to let the terms of my life be dictated by those who only saw my spark as a commodity to be bought, sold, traded, and discarded.”
“Because Megatron told you so.”
Deadlock’s fans rattle through his vents. He’s relieved Ratchet can’t hear the anxiety in him, though perhaps the medic can feel it. He’s never been very good at controlling his field when rattled. It’s never much mattered. Anger and threat are very effective tools to survive among the Decepticons.
“I’ve been told a lot of things.” Deadlock forces his hands out of fists. “You told me I was special and sent me back out into the streets. Megatron picked my face out of a crowd and made me believe I was special.” And Gasket had told him he was a good mech, with a good spark.
All of those things are true.
And all of those things are lies.
“All that tells me is that you had an opportunity to choose a different path, and you didn’t,” Ratchet replies, his tone flat through the comm, thick with disapproval, as though he’s Deadlock’s caretaker or overseer, someone who has a right to judge Deadlock on the choices he’s made to survive.
No.
Frag that.
Frag Ratchet and his sense of superiority and his utter blindness to the hands Fate dealt.
“You were forged a medic!” Deadlock snarls into the comm, his lips peeled back over his denta in a snarl. “You never had to guess your purpose. You had a job, a function, you had a life.”
His vents go ragged. He wants to scream for all the good it will do him. He takes a step toward Ratchet, not threatening, but desperate to get the emotion out because it doesn’t quite carry in a comm as he wishes it could.
Ratchet, to his credit, stands his ground.
Deadlock’s frame goes hot. There’s no atmosphere to drag in, to cool his internals, and he wishes the lack of it were enough to chill him. “I was sparked, and then I was tossed into the gutter when there was no place for me. I was hated before I’d ever done anything. I never had a chance. So you don’t get to tell me what I should have done.”
He glares, jaw clenched, denta gnashing and grinding together. His spark is a small, taut ball of emotion in his chamber. His knees rattle. He wants to transform and rev away, but they’re trapped on this asteroid together, and there’s nowhere for him to go.
He’s stuck with the ghost of his past who’s disappointed in him, and Drift rails at the injustice of it all.
Silence. Across the comm and whipping around him. Deadlock wants to strike, the urge boils inside him, and he doesn’t know what holds him back. His vents heave. He glares.
Ratchet stares back at him, expression oddly closed off, no trace of anger in his face.
“You’re right,” he says, across the comm, his voice a whisper-soft murmur.
Deadlock cycles his optics. He rears back, feet sinking into loose strata. “What?”
Ratchet’s shoulders drift down. “You’re right. It’s not my place to judge your choices. Primus knows, if I’d been less fortunate, perhaps I might have made the same.” He tilts his head, looks past Deadlock to something in the vague distance. “I was lucky. I am lucky. Your methods abhor me, but… I understand them.”
Deadlock’s lips curl back in a snarl. “I don’t need your permission or approval. I don’t need your acceptance or your understanding.”
Ratchet lifts his hands, palm down, placating. “That’s not what I meant.” His jaw works, his gaze shifting back to meet Deadlock’s. “You don’t have to explain yourself, and I’m not going to judge you. I’m done with that.”
“Agree to disagree, is it?” Deadlock grins and there’s nothing pleasant about it. “How gracious of you.”
Ratchet drags a hand down his face. His sigh echoes through the comm. “I don’t want to argue with you, Deadlock. I don’t want to turn this into a fight. I just want to find something useful so we can get out of here.”
“And get as far away from the evil, murderous Decepticon as possible, no doubt.” He stalks past Ratchet, bumping shoulders with the medic. “Let’s go.”
Ratchet’s hand grabs his shoulder before he’s out of range, and it takes everything of Drift still within him not to shrug off the grab. Deadlock pauses, half-turns, gives Ratchet a side-eye.
“Right now, we’re neither,” he says, tone solemn, free hand briefly covering his badge. “We’re two stranded mechs who just want to get back home.”
Deadlock dips out from under the touch, as polite a motion as he can make it. “Sure we are,” he says. “We’re even allies.” He grins, showing a lot of denta. “And maybe we’ll get lucky and find a piece of our busted ship.”
He punctuates his words by transforming and starting back down the crash strip, not too fast Ratchet can’t catch up, but fast enough Ratchet isn’t going to stand around waiting. Sure enough, he sees Ratchet transform in his rearview mirror.
Fortunately, Ratchet is silent. It’s enough that Deadlock can ventilate, can slowly unknot his cables, and work out the tension twisting his lines.
He buries the anger back down, using it as fuel to lock Drift back in his cage, and gets himself back on solid ground again.
Ten minutes later, they strike jackpot.
Ratchet’s the one who spies it, he of the superior sensors. He pings Deadlock and transforms, pointing off to the right. They’ve long since lost the crash track, as their skid had not been that long, but it will be easy enough to follow their tire treads back.
Deadlock catches the glint of something metallic in the distance. It’s a large something, but he can’t identify it. He starts trudging toward it, Ratchet ahead of him, an eagerness in Ratchet’s quick pace.
Maybe Ratchet’s as ready to put some distance between himself and Deadlock as Deadlock is.
Deadlock can hardly believe his optics or their luck. Ratchet gets there first and heaves the metal object out of the ground. It’s big, heavy, and it’s a relatively intact communications array. Granted, the end of it is ragged from where it’d been torn off the ship, and some of the spokes are twisted or missing.
But it’s mostly present.
Deadlock’s jaw drops.
“What are the odds?” Ratchet says as he turns the thing around and around in his hands.
“Is it fixable?” Deadlock asks.
“We’ll see.” Ratchet grins, and there’s something genuine about it. Especially when he looks up with bright optics, and the weight of the war briefly vanishes from his shoulders. “But I think we’ve got a good chance. Here. I’ll carry it.”
He hands it over, and Deadlock grunts as the heavy array tumbles into his hands. He’s not a medic, and he’s much smaller than Ratchet, so it’s all he can do not to drop it. Fortunately, Ratchet’s not watching as he’s too busy transforming and popping open his rear doors, revealing the patient transport area.
It’s small, barely large enough for a mech Deadlock’s size, and the edges of it are crammed with medical equipment. And for a moment, Deadlock’s stunned by the trust Ratchet’s given him, seemingly without thought.
He’s vulnerable like this. Incredibly so. Deadlock, with a well-placed shot, could find Ratchet’s spark chamber and kill him in an instant. He could crawl inside and do significant damage before Ratchet could manage to expel him. He could do any number of horrible things.
Ratchet hadn’t even hesitated.
“Well? Get on with it,” Ratchet prompts, giving an impatient wiggle that has no business being attractive.
Deadlock grunts and heaves the array into Ratchet’s transport area, sliding it into the narrow space and up against the bunk. He casts around for some kind of strap to keep it in place, but there’s nothing. He shrugs and backs away, giving Ratchet space to close his doors. He guesses that’s good enough.
“Back to home base?” Deadlock suggests as he turns in a circle, glancing around to see if anything else had landed here with the communications array. There’s some soot and broken, smaller pieces and a handful of loose nuts and bolts, but nothing useful. They’ve plenty of the latter in the repair kit back at the ship.
“Can’t imagine there’s anything more useful than this out here,” Ratchet replies, and his tone sounds almost jaunty.
Considering the tension from earlier, it’s a bit jarring.
“Sounds good,” Deadlock says.
Ratchet’s rear end does another little bobbing wobble before he rumbles toward their tire treads. Deadlock transforms and follows, a small bubble of excitement building in his spark.
~
Title: Lost and Lonely Space
Universe: IDW, Pre-Death of Optimus Prime
Characters: Ratchet, Deadlock, Alien Original Character(s)
Rating: M
Enticements: Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Canon Divergence
Description: While on a sabbatical from the war, Ratchet runs into a spot of trouble that lands him in close company with a familiar face, the famed Decepticon Deadlock.
Deadlock tosses and turns on the berth, Ratchet’s sincere ‘thank you’ echoing in his audials. He’d expected more snarky comebacks, more implications of how much of a monster Deadlock had become. He’d expected Ratchet to press, to force the argument.
Once again, Ratchet has ignored his expectations.
It’s disconcerting.
There’s only so much recharge one can get, and right now, Deadlock is full up. But the idea of venturing out where Ratchet is very much online fills him with a mingling sense of dread and excitement. He doesn’t know which emotion bothers him more.
He folds his arms behind his head and stares at the ceiling, tracing the shape of a rust stain. It kind of looks like Soundwave’s head.
He wonders if the Decepticons are looking for him. Has anyone noticed he’s been out of contact for over a week? That the deal with the Pentas obviously went south? Or has Turmoil been hiding it? Probably tagged it as a failure on Deadlock’s end, blocking anyone from caring about it.
Megatron might. If anyone reminds him Deadlock’s assignment to Turmoil was only supposed to be temporary.
Starscream’s probably doing his best to make sure Megatron forgets.
Deadlock vents and scrapes a hand down his face. He’s in no hurry to get back to the Decepticon fold. Except, perhaps, to prove to Turmoil he’s very much alive and not to celebrate too soon. But he’s not in a hurry to return to war either. He’s good at what he does, killing and the like, but he doesn’t enjoy it.
He never has.
It’s necessary. At least, he tells himself this often enough if only to stave off the night purges. The violence and the killing, both are necessary, because they never would have found a path to freedom without it.
He hates having to confront those choices. He hates every little seed of doubt Ratchet plants in his mind, because being around the medic thrusts him back into the past, back to the leaker he’d been. It reminds him he’d had a choice, and he made his choice, but it could have been a different choice.
Deadlock hates it.
If he could get Ratchet out of here faster, back to the Autobots, somewhere away from Deadlock where he’s not a reminder and a question and a moral quandary – Deadlock would do it.
In a sparkbeat.
He doesn’t need the temptation. He doesn’t need Drift. Drift will die out here. He’s weak, and he’s considerate, and he’s not built to survive. Drift is a burden Deadlock will bury until the end of the war, if it ever comes.
Drift, if Deadlock’s lucky, will never see the sun again.
But Ratchet rips away Deadlock’s luck. The sight of him is a memory of gentle hands and encouraging words, perhaps not truly sparkfelt but there all the same. Ratchet gives Drift strength, and makes it harder for Deadlock to snarl and shoot him down.
Ratchet makes Drift want, and that just can’t stand.
Deadlock’s denta grit so hard he tastes sparks. He swears the silence gives room to sound, to the screaming in the back of his head. It gives Drift a voice he doesn’t deserve.
Deadlock can’t take it anymore. He heaves himself out of the berth and strides out of the room, feeling both antsy and ready to rumble. The edginess lingers, but the rattle-clank of his own movement, and the hissing-rattle of the crashed ship slowly going through its death-throes, helps chase away Drift’s whisper.
Deadlock’s not two steps out of the recharge room when Ratchet calls out to him, “I was thinking we need to go for a walk.”
Deadlock blinks and nearly misses a step at the almost congenial tone. He follows Ratchet’s voice to the table, where he’s got a thin piece of plastic spread out and is scribbling on it with a marker.
“A walk?” Deadlock repeats.
Ratchet marks something on the plastic, his expression intent and focused. “We left a trail of destruction behind us. If we follow the track, we might be able to find something we lost.”
For the life of him, Deadlock doesn’t know why that hasn’t occurred to him before.
He moves closer to the table, peering down at Ratchet’s work. As near as he can tell, it’s a crudely drawn map, with the crash site marked in blue and an approximation of their skid marked in long lines of black. Ratchet’s sketched out the landscape – the rise and fall of the craggy rocks around them. Possible points of wreckage impact are marked in green.
“Are you opposed or have you done this already, and I’m just wasting my time?”
Deadlock shakes his head. “Neither. I’m just annoyed I hadn’t thought of it before.”
“Yeah, well, that makes two of us.” Ratchet grins, and there’s nothing but amusement in it. “The good thing is, we can’t possibly get lost. The bad thing is--”
“--we don’t know what’s out there,” Deadlock finishes for him. “But to be fair, we’ve been here for over a week, and nothing’s come near to investigate yet. We’re probably safe.”
Ratchet snorts. “Talk about a relative term.” He straightens, arms pulling over his head in a stretch, hydraulics and cables creaking.
Deadlock absolutely isn’t looking or anything. He directs his gaze at the hand-drawn map instead. “We’ll need to exchange actual comm codes if you want to communicate.” Narrow band comms won’t cut it for a long-distance excursion.
“Yeah, I’d thought about it.” A datachip appears in front of him, blocking off a portion of the map. “Here’s mine.”
Deadlock accepts it and slots it into place with a tiny click. “What? You don’t trust me to cable up? I’m hurt, Ratchet. Truly.”
Ratchet rolls his optics. “Sure you are.” He holds out a hand, fingers wriggling. “Well?”
Fishing out a comm chip, Deadlock hands it over and watches Ratchet install it. He waits a moment and then taps on the comm line, just to see if Ratchet can respond. He gets his answer when the medic huffs.
“I can hear you,” Ratchet grumps. It shouldn’t be so endearing, but it kind of is. Ratchet’s gruff is a frag of a lot nicer than Hook’s grump. That’s for damn sure.
“Just checking.” Deadlock grins. “You want to go now, or do you need a nap first?”
Ratchet scowls. “Shut up.” He focuses on the map for a second longer, probably taking a capture of it, and then moves to the door. “Come on. Help me open this so we can go.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” Deadlock fires off a jaunty salute.
He doesn’t know what it says about him that he’s amused by Ratchet’s optic roll.
They each grab one side of the door, fingers slotting into grooves where they’ve done this time and time again, and pull. With a grating, grinding screech, the bay doors slide open with enough space for them to squeeze out one at a time.
Deadlock takes a moment to orient himself. Illumination is sketchy at best, with the nearest light-providing sun lightyears away, and various floating asteroids interrupting the path between its rays and the surface of the asteroid. There’s enough refracted light to provide some visibility, but thank Primus for peripheral and regional sensors. Otherwise they’d be walking, or apparently driving as Ratchet’s just transformed, blind.
The terrain is just solid enough Deadlock’s wheels don’t spin uselessly when he, too, transforms. He takes up the rear, following the track of their crash back the way they came. He’s got his sensors trained outward, hoping to ping back a material that doesn’t match the local stone.
The silence is oppressive. Deadlock doesn’t really think of the Decepticon mobile command base as home, but it’s the closest thing he has to one, and the Nemesis is always noisy. There’s no graveyard shift. It’s always fully staffed and ready to respond to an Autobot incursion or assault at a moment’s notice.
It’s like sleeping on the streets, and there’s no sweeter lullaby than the rattle and clank of a thousand mechs in motion, the industries chugging and churning out their products, the riotous murmur of a thousand voices arguing and talking and loving and losing. The hiss and squeak of pipes filling the air, the stench of the perfumed and the unwashed, and the rusting and the brand new.
His comm crackles to life.
“You want to tell me?”
Deadlock would have blinked, if he were in root mode. “Don’t remember you askin’ a question.”
“Why the Decepticons?” Ratchet asks, as though they’ve been in the middle of a conversation that’s been interrupted.
He stares hard at Ratchet’s taillights. Ratchet’s tone is too casual to be believed. “Pretty sure we’ve already discussed that particular question. It’s not my fault you don’t find my answers acceptable.”
“I meant that you had so much potential. I hate that instead it’s turned into this.”
Deadlock scoffs into the line. “You don’t know anything about me. How would you know what potential I had?” He revs his engine, in lieu of scowling at the mech. “Just because you disapprove of my choices, doesn’t mean they’re the wrong ones.”
“Then tell me.”
“What?”
“You said I don’t know anything about you. Enlighten me then.”
Deadlock would squint, if he could. “Why? What’s the point? You’re not going to get me to defect, and I don’t think you honestly care.”
For a moment, there’s silence. Across the comm and in the world around them. Deadlock feels the crunch of the rock and grit beneath his tires, but he can’t hear it. They’ve passed small bits of the ship, bolts and tiny petals of the hull, but nothing useful, nothing worth stopping to scoop up.
“There was a time Megatron and Orion Pax held the same goals,” Ratchet finally says, his words crackling as though thick with static. “Autobots and Decepticons could have fought as one, rather than against each other. Somehow, somewhere, our paths diverged.”
So it is to be a political debate then?
Well. At least it’ll fill the silence.
“There’s a fundamental difference in our lives,” Deadlock says, drawing heavily on ‘Toward Peace’ because it has become the framework of his understanding. “Orion Pax was too content to let people suffer and die while he took the long path of diplomacy, attempting to convince mechs who didn’t want to listen. I didn’t want to die. And there were many like me, who didn’t want to be the collateral damage on that road.”
“And yet the killing continues.”
“You can’t expect someone who’s finally found freedom, to give it up and bow to the rules again.” Deadlock sends a dark chuckle through the comm. “The Tyrant is dead! Here are your new leaders, same flavor as the old, but don’t worry, they’re better. We promise. Don’t forget your rulebook on the way out.”
“So it’s anarchy you want then.”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” Deadlock bites out, anger curling low and heavy around his spark. “I prefer to think of it as living without the weight of unjust laws dragging you into the pit.”
“Who decides the law then?”
“What?”
Ratchet’s voice comes through, insufferably patient. “You don’t want the absence of law, you simply want the existing law to be fair. Therefore, who gets to decide what’s just and unjust?”
Deadlock’s engine revs again. There’s a hot-cold sensation twisting and churning in his gut. He wants to scream as much as he wants to hit something. Ratchet’s baiting him, he’s sure of it.
It’s not going to fragging work.
He slams on the brakes and launches out of alt-mode, feet skidding across the ground in the middle of the crash-track, bringing him to a halt. Dirt and rocks ping against his shins, but it’s nothing compared to the dust choking his air and now his vents.
Ahead of him, Ratchet’s brake lights flare red, and then Ratchet transforms as well, the distance between them the length of a mech’s stride or two, but it might as well be a chasm.
“The will of the people,” Deadlock says as Ratchet turns to face him. Toward Peace serves him well, in this moment. “Not the command of one. A mech should choose his own fate. Let it be dictated by his choices, not the circumstances which birthed him. It’s not that complicated.”
“Choices,” Ratchet echoes, and his optics go dark. “You speak of choices, and yet when given the opportunity, you ran toward one of violence and death. You chose to spill the energon of your fellow mechs, some of whom fought against the very thing you hated.”
Deadlock sneers, lips pulled back over his denta. “I chose to fight. I chose not to let the terms of my life be dictated by those who only saw my spark as a commodity to be bought, sold, traded, and discarded.”
“Because Megatron told you so.”
Deadlock’s fans rattle through his vents. He’s relieved Ratchet can’t hear the anxiety in him, though perhaps the medic can feel it. He’s never been very good at controlling his field when rattled. It’s never much mattered. Anger and threat are very effective tools to survive among the Decepticons.
“I’ve been told a lot of things.” Deadlock forces his hands out of fists. “You told me I was special and sent me back out into the streets. Megatron picked my face out of a crowd and made me believe I was special.” And Gasket had told him he was a good mech, with a good spark.
All of those things are true.
And all of those things are lies.
“All that tells me is that you had an opportunity to choose a different path, and you didn’t,” Ratchet replies, his tone flat through the comm, thick with disapproval, as though he’s Deadlock’s caretaker or overseer, someone who has a right to judge Deadlock on the choices he’s made to survive.
No.
Frag that.
Frag Ratchet and his sense of superiority and his utter blindness to the hands Fate dealt.
“You were forged a medic!” Deadlock snarls into the comm, his lips peeled back over his denta in a snarl. “You never had to guess your purpose. You had a job, a function, you had a life.”
His vents go ragged. He wants to scream for all the good it will do him. He takes a step toward Ratchet, not threatening, but desperate to get the emotion out because it doesn’t quite carry in a comm as he wishes it could.
Ratchet, to his credit, stands his ground.
Deadlock’s frame goes hot. There’s no atmosphere to drag in, to cool his internals, and he wishes the lack of it were enough to chill him. “I was sparked, and then I was tossed into the gutter when there was no place for me. I was hated before I’d ever done anything. I never had a chance. So you don’t get to tell me what I should have done.”
He glares, jaw clenched, denta gnashing and grinding together. His spark is a small, taut ball of emotion in his chamber. His knees rattle. He wants to transform and rev away, but they’re trapped on this asteroid together, and there’s nowhere for him to go.
He’s stuck with the ghost of his past who’s disappointed in him, and Drift rails at the injustice of it all.
Silence. Across the comm and whipping around him. Deadlock wants to strike, the urge boils inside him, and he doesn’t know what holds him back. His vents heave. He glares.
Ratchet stares back at him, expression oddly closed off, no trace of anger in his face.
“You’re right,” he says, across the comm, his voice a whisper-soft murmur.
Deadlock cycles his optics. He rears back, feet sinking into loose strata. “What?”
Ratchet’s shoulders drift down. “You’re right. It’s not my place to judge your choices. Primus knows, if I’d been less fortunate, perhaps I might have made the same.” He tilts his head, looks past Deadlock to something in the vague distance. “I was lucky. I am lucky. Your methods abhor me, but… I understand them.”
Deadlock’s lips curl back in a snarl. “I don’t need your permission or approval. I don’t need your acceptance or your understanding.”
Ratchet lifts his hands, palm down, placating. “That’s not what I meant.” His jaw works, his gaze shifting back to meet Deadlock’s. “You don’t have to explain yourself, and I’m not going to judge you. I’m done with that.”
“Agree to disagree, is it?” Deadlock grins and there’s nothing pleasant about it. “How gracious of you.”
Ratchet drags a hand down his face. His sigh echoes through the comm. “I don’t want to argue with you, Deadlock. I don’t want to turn this into a fight. I just want to find something useful so we can get out of here.”
“And get as far away from the evil, murderous Decepticon as possible, no doubt.” He stalks past Ratchet, bumping shoulders with the medic. “Let’s go.”
Ratchet’s hand grabs his shoulder before he’s out of range, and it takes everything of Drift still within him not to shrug off the grab. Deadlock pauses, half-turns, gives Ratchet a side-eye.
“Right now, we’re neither,” he says, tone solemn, free hand briefly covering his badge. “We’re two stranded mechs who just want to get back home.”
Deadlock dips out from under the touch, as polite a motion as he can make it. “Sure we are,” he says. “We’re even allies.” He grins, showing a lot of denta. “And maybe we’ll get lucky and find a piece of our busted ship.”
He punctuates his words by transforming and starting back down the crash strip, not too fast Ratchet can’t catch up, but fast enough Ratchet isn’t going to stand around waiting. Sure enough, he sees Ratchet transform in his rearview mirror.
Fortunately, Ratchet is silent. It’s enough that Deadlock can ventilate, can slowly unknot his cables, and work out the tension twisting his lines.
He buries the anger back down, using it as fuel to lock Drift back in his cage, and gets himself back on solid ground again.
Ten minutes later, they strike jackpot.
Ratchet’s the one who spies it, he of the superior sensors. He pings Deadlock and transforms, pointing off to the right. They’ve long since lost the crash track, as their skid had not been that long, but it will be easy enough to follow their tire treads back.
Deadlock catches the glint of something metallic in the distance. It’s a large something, but he can’t identify it. He starts trudging toward it, Ratchet ahead of him, an eagerness in Ratchet’s quick pace.
Maybe Ratchet’s as ready to put some distance between himself and Deadlock as Deadlock is.
Deadlock can hardly believe his optics or their luck. Ratchet gets there first and heaves the metal object out of the ground. It’s big, heavy, and it’s a relatively intact communications array. Granted, the end of it is ragged from where it’d been torn off the ship, and some of the spokes are twisted or missing.
But it’s mostly present.
Deadlock’s jaw drops.
“What are the odds?” Ratchet says as he turns the thing around and around in his hands.
“Is it fixable?” Deadlock asks.
“We’ll see.” Ratchet grins, and there’s something genuine about it. Especially when he looks up with bright optics, and the weight of the war briefly vanishes from his shoulders. “But I think we’ve got a good chance. Here. I’ll carry it.”
He hands it over, and Deadlock grunts as the heavy array tumbles into his hands. He’s not a medic, and he’s much smaller than Ratchet, so it’s all he can do not to drop it. Fortunately, Ratchet’s not watching as he’s too busy transforming and popping open his rear doors, revealing the patient transport area.
It’s small, barely large enough for a mech Deadlock’s size, and the edges of it are crammed with medical equipment. And for a moment, Deadlock’s stunned by the trust Ratchet’s given him, seemingly without thought.
He’s vulnerable like this. Incredibly so. Deadlock, with a well-placed shot, could find Ratchet’s spark chamber and kill him in an instant. He could crawl inside and do significant damage before Ratchet could manage to expel him. He could do any number of horrible things.
Ratchet hadn’t even hesitated.
“Well? Get on with it,” Ratchet prompts, giving an impatient wiggle that has no business being attractive.
Deadlock grunts and heaves the array into Ratchet’s transport area, sliding it into the narrow space and up against the bunk. He casts around for some kind of strap to keep it in place, but there’s nothing. He shrugs and backs away, giving Ratchet space to close his doors. He guesses that’s good enough.
“Back to home base?” Deadlock suggests as he turns in a circle, glancing around to see if anything else had landed here with the communications array. There’s some soot and broken, smaller pieces and a handful of loose nuts and bolts, but nothing useful. They’ve plenty of the latter in the repair kit back at the ship.
“Can’t imagine there’s anything more useful than this out here,” Ratchet replies, and his tone sounds almost jaunty.
Considering the tension from earlier, it’s a bit jarring.
“Sounds good,” Deadlock says.
Ratchet’s rear end does another little bobbing wobble before he rumbles toward their tire treads. Deadlock transforms and follows, a small bubble of excitement building in his spark.
