WIP Week day 6 - Newest WIP
This is from an idea I've been playing around with for maybe two weeks at most for now. For now, it's called "Pick Your Poison" and it's about dreams and that's all the context I'll give for now. c:
Also, I'd love to do something more with the formatting but that doesn't really work on tumblr, so... you'll have to wait for the story to hit AO3 for that. ^^"
Bee was lying on their back, staring up at the clouded sky far, far above them as their processor was slowly shutting itself down. In the distance, someone was calling their name, but that seemed unimportant now. They just wanted to rest now.
Bumblebee woke with a start, visions of violence, fire and death running rampant in his processor. The acrid taste of spilled energon mixed with ashes and dust was still burning in his intake.
Panicking, the youngling scrambled to sit up. There was something wrapped around their pedes, though, and the more he struggled and kicked, the more tightly it seemed to grip him. So, with the strength of the desperate, Bee finally threw himself backwards in a last-ditch effort to escape. Except that he didn't land on his back and flop into a backwards roll as he had planned. Instead, it turned out that there was no ground at all behind him and suddenly he was falling.
Caught by surprise, the youngling reacted just a moment too late. Instinctively, he gasped for air and tried to get his servos below him. His right never got anywhere even close. Bee squeaked. Even as his frame was already caught in motion, unable to stop what was about to happen, the youngling's perception slowed down. His gaze caught on the familiar shape of the small figurine—a cybercat Bumblebee had built with Sunstreaker's aid for the medic when he was still a sparkling—on the desk next to Ratchet's berth. Oh. Oh no. Then, his left servo servo hit the ground at an awkward angle, twisting out from under Bee without any resistance at all, and everything sped up once again.
There was barely enough time for Bumblebee to register the pain in his wrist and the mortification spreading from his tanks because he had got spooked by his stupid dreams again before he hit the ground with his winglets first and his visual feed blacked out for a nanocycle from the pain.
Agony was racing through their frame. Every vent brought wet, gurgling pain with it. They couldn't move because everything hurt so much and, around them, the world continued to burn as if it did not care at all.
Then, someone white and orange and familiar dropped onto his knees next to them and they slipped back into unconsciousness.
When Bumblebee's processor rebooted, his HUD had been overtaken by a cacophony of angry red warnings and alerts blinking and blaring and pinging to inform him of what he already knew; everything was hurting like scrap. Even when he dismissed them, they only left reluctantly, fighting every step of the way as they were slowly, one after the other, dragged across their HUD and sucked into the appropriate diagnostic folder.
If he hadn't hit his helm during the fall, Bee mused silently as he watched the familiar ceiling of Ratchet's berthroom leisurely come back into focus, he would probably get a migraine later from the visual cluster fuck his diagnostics had produced in the aftermath. Just then, another alert popped up on his HUD: 'Warning! Impending helm ache!'
The youngling snorted softly. He regretted it immediately. The movement had jostled his winglets that were still trapped below them, crashed by their own weight, and it hurt.
Only distantly did he question why he was no longer feeling scared at all. Bee just knew, once again, that he was safe in one of his caregiver's room and that seemed to have been enough to calm his panicking frame. He was on the Ark and there was no War and all of them were safe, safe, safe. Well, most of them. For now, at least.
The youngling was just hoping that he hadn't hurt his winglets too badly. Ratchet had enough problems without Bumblebee needlessly endangering himself in stupid, stupid, stupid ways because his stupid processor couldn't tell the difference between stupid dreams and reality.
Once his visual feed had mostly been cleared, Bumblebee let his helm loll to the side as he waited for the report of his internal diagnostics to come in. Even though he really hoped that he wouldn't need to tell his caregiver about any of this, he was still smart enough not to move until he knew that he had not badly broken anything. Ratchet would have absolutely had his helm if he aggravated a potential spinal injury by getting up too early. No matter how much it hurt to continue lying on top of his injured winglets.
So, to distract himself, he looked around the room. Bee's pedes, well, at least their lower halves, hadn't quite made the journey with the rest of the youngling's frame. They were still lying on top of the berth. His own blanket that he had brought from his own hab last night when he had crawled into his caregiver's berth was wrapped tightly around them and- Primus, that was embarrassing. Bumblebee had got scared by his own blanket. Amazing. What a great trait for an explorer to have.
With a quiet sigh, Bee deliberately offlined his visual feed and resigned himself to simply endure the pain radiating out from his winglets until the report arrived. It was better than staring at his own stupid pedes in any case.
He did not have to wait very long. Barely a few microcycle had passed by the time that his diagnostics spat an injury analysis onto their HUD.
Quickly, Bumblebee glanced at the report. Scrap. Scrap, scrap, scrap.
Then, he immediately pinged Ratchet with his location and a copy of the report before dramatically letting his helm flopping back onto the side. There were no spinal injuries in the analysis, at least, which was definitely good but the medic would still have his helm after putting Bumblebee back together.
Because there was definitely no way that the youngling could explain to his guardian just how he had not only broken his wrist but also damaged his winglets this severely without mentioning why he had fallen of the berth and, thus, the dreams. And that meant telling Ratchet that he had been lying to him for dekacycle now.
