Like Migratory Birds, I Circle Back
With the AllSpark lost, Ratchet believes that every life counted, even if it was on the other side. But ideals have pricetags and Ratchet can only pay what he owes in solitude. But Wheeljack makes the payment not so steep.
Ratchet rolls up the mountain back to the Ark. He was saved the kidnapping that “wounded” decepticon had in mind by another one of Wheeljack’s gadgets. He couldn’t wait to bring the inventor his thanks.
He transforms at the entrance of the orange craft, welcomed home by its bright yellow hue against the bleak twilight. As he walks more and more bots come into view busying themselves around Autobot headquarters. Only Ironhide gives him a small nod as a welcome back, Ratchet doesn’t blame them.
“Hey doc, ready to properly join us?”
Ratchet turns his helm right to see Sunstreaker there with his arms crossed. He sighs but ignores the racer and keeps going.
“Hey doc, Doc! Ratchet!” Sunstreaker turns Ratchet around by the pauldron so they stood face to face, “Can’t you at least look at me when I’m tryna talk to you?”
Nearby bots stood and watched now, no longer busy with their tasks.
“Sideswipe is stable and just needs a few rounds of deep defragmentation.” Ratchet checks his chronometer, “He should be waking soon, I think he’d appreciate you there.”
Sunstreaker crosses his arms, “You do good work, doc, just wish it was applied in the right direction.” He fixes his optics on Ratchet, “Autobots don’t fix up decepticons.”
Ratchet wants to leave this confrontation. Sunstreaker was worried for his twin and Ratchet’s not one to reproach him for this. But looking around, he finds the sentiment reflected in the optics of every onlooker. It seemed that Ratchet would have to explain himself to the jury before moving on.
“The Allspark is lost, we could be the last of us there ever is and will be. All of you are the future of our kind, and this goes for the other side as well.” Ratchet tries to choose his words carefully, but judging by the looks he’s getting, this might escalate to Optimus after all. “I think it’d serve us well to remember that we’re all Cybertronians.”
Sunstreaker who looked ready to drop it snapped around with renewed vigour, “Well then doctor, why don’t we all just come ‘round the Well, make nice and kiss? Oh that’s right, the Well’s dead, Cyberton is dead because of the deceticreeps. O’buckethead and his suicidal ideology will offline everyone of us before he’s through-so save me your “We’re all Cybertronian” scrap.”
Before Ratchet could respond Sunstreaker’s already leaving with a sigh, “But thanks for continuing our species, doc. I’ll be sure to let Sideswipe know he can look forward to being clobbered in the helm by Breakdown again.”
The gathered crowd was dispersing, going back to their tasks again. For a moment Ratchet felt lead in his pedes, wanting to explain himself more but also wanting to just turn around and leave again. Just get to Wheeljack’s lab, you should get this to him.
Treating everyone wasn’t all doom and gloom, the occasional vehicon would gift him a human trinket for his services. Of course, Ratchet himself had no use for broken TVs, random furniture and bits of plastic and cloth but he knew Wheeljack loved them.
Some time ago, Wheeljack had dragged him into a small side room attached to the lab with a vague pink glow about his fins. It turns out he’d turned that storage room to his own miniature room, a large table taking up most of the space with a half-built Protihex atop it. He works on it during his occasional off-time to take his mind off things.
“Already rebuilding Cybertron, huh?”
Ratchet had given the inventor a few pats on the shoulder and felt the amusement grow in the other’s EM field. “You know it, I’m already thinking about where I’d put my labs.”
Ratchet quickened his paces towards the Ark’s lab. He gets it, everyone’s still tense from the recent skirmish and the fact that he wasn’t kicked out the moment he set foot on the ark was already courtesy enough. He supposed one can’t have their cake and eat it. Solitude came with his choices.
Without thinking, he pressed his servo to the scanner by the lab’s doors and was promptly denied entry. Right, there’s sensitive info in there. The only place he could really still call his own on the Ark was Medbay, but time had a funny way of manifesting itself as dust here on earth. The layer of powder he’d find on his medical slabs would only remind him of his own absence. He reached into his subspace to leave Wheeljack his little trinkets, then he’d leave.
The doors slid open to let white light flood into the corridor. Ratchet felt an instant of unreality until Wheeljack reached across the threshold to hold his pauldrons.
“Wheeljack, just the mech I wanted to see.” Ratchet smiled and reached out his palm. Wheeljack quickly pressed his palm to it before ushering Ratchet into the starkly lit lab. He supposed they were oddballs for enjoying this kind of lighting, maybe it was just their programming. Medical and engineering units were made to feel at home in fluorescent white.
In a side storage section, Ratchet sat on one of the chairs between the two monitors that lined the walls while Wheeljack leaned back on the bench. Two cubes of energon appear out of a pneumatic tube embedded in the wall and slide to Wheeljack along a magnetic track on the bench. Probably one of his least explosive inventions.
But Ratchet was thankful when the warmth of the energon spread on his palms. The whiteness of the lab felt more like a blanket that covered them both, preserving the heat of the energon.
“Your “mobile immobilizer” really saved my aft out there, I wanted to show you my appreciation.” Ratchet reaches into his subspace and pulls out his newly acquired treasures: a peeling bathtub, screens of various sizes, a bag of colourful glass and a painting roughly the size of two humans.
“Oh Ratch you shouldn’t have!” Wheeljack’s fins flashed so blue it was almost white. He quickly gathered the gifts and carefully subspaced them, it would be put to good use later on. “I hope you’re not going out there just to extort poor decepticons on my behalf.” He cackles a little at his own joke, he always knew how to amuse himself.
Ratchet huffed out a chuckle, “Maybe I’d get less flack for my escapades if that was the case.”
Wheeljack squinted at the other mech who’d gone sheepishly quiet, “Did they give you trouble again? Just tell me, you’re not a great liar anyways.”
Ratchet takes a small sip, then another, and yet another one. Wheeljack doesn’t say anything, just leans in closer, closer and then right in his faceplates.
“Ok, alright, they didn’t give me trouble, we just talked a little.” Ratchet pushes his chair back a little to squirm away, “Everyone’s a little tense, the skirmish took more casualties than usual.”
“But you’re a medical unit, you see hurt Cybertronian you heal, what do those numbnuts not get?” Wheeljack sets his drink down with a deliberate clink, “It’s Sunstreaker ain’t it? Sideswipe’s recovering and he needed to blow off some steam.”
Ratchet stood to lean back on the bench with Wheeljack, “First of all, I wouldn’t say that I heal solely because I’m a medical unit.”
Wheeljack withers a little, “oh, right - sorry.”
“No no, it’s just, that’s what I’m afraid they’ll think. I know you don’t think that way, and it does come easy to me, the urge to heal and soothe. But that's not why I do it.” Ratchet traces the edges of the energon cube with his digits, “I want us all to live to see the day the Allspark is recovered. Isn’t it quite pointless to fight a war to extinction?”
Wheeljack shrugs, “I don’t really get why we’re fighting at all sometimes. I mean, I get why we’re fighting against the Decepticons, but I don’t understand why they keep continuing the war. They treat us like, like we’re the oligarchs that oppressed them! I don’t know about Megatron but I sure remember you fixing him and his miners up during the revolution.”
A silence falls between them then, making the room feel more fluorescent.
“Back then, I was convinced of the revolution and of Megatronus at its helm.” Ratchet began after a while as he set his now-cold energon down. “I thought: a system that fed on sparks doesn’t deserve to exist. I don’t…regret my choice back then, but then I’d never imagine it’d lead to this.”
Ratchet looks up with weary optics, “So where do my choices now lead? Does doing what I believe in always lead to a better result? I wonder everytime I weld Starscream’s line shut, everytime I amputate a necrotic limb from Soundwave and every time I leave Thundercracker with a beacon and medical-grade energon. Am I just dragging out the tortuous death of a species?”
The mute buzzing of the fluorescent light snaps Ratchet back into the present, he turns to Wheeljack with apologetic optics, “Oh Wheeljack, I didn’t mean to- I mean this was supposed to be- oh why can’t I just be happy for a moment?”
Wheeljack reaches a servo to smooth rhythmic circles on Ratchet’s back. Outside is a million-year civil war, there is hurt and suffering abound, there is resentment, mistrust and misunderstanding. But magically, it all stops at the doors of Wheeljack’s lab. The neutral ground extends until the storage section where warm energon and understanding optics instead, fill Ratchet’s spark. So like migratory seabirds, Ratchet always circles back to the lighthouse nestled in the Ark.
Wordlessly Wheeljack moves his servo from Ratchet’s back to hold onto his palm. Then with his other hand he scribbles in messy Neocybex: I’m just glad you’re back.
