Chapter Text
It only took Ratchet a few minutes of being hooked up to Rung’s processor to realize something more than just a bit of corrupted data had occurred, and pulled Wing aside with a terse order to Drift to keep an optic on things.
While they spoke, he fiddled with the neat, if inflamed, weld line around Wing’s claw, needing something to do with his servos while he thought the problem through.
“When Rung was with the Institute, the first time round, it looks like he might have tried to make a backup of himself, behind a patient confidentiality lock.” Wing tilted his helm, blinking that one massive amber optic as he processed the information given to him.
“Why would he have one of those?”
Ratchet shrugged. “He may have been a medic, Wing. I have one I store all my patient knowledge behind. It’s standard practice, they’re next to impossible to hack, and patient privacy is a big deal. I can’t get behind it to figure out what’s in there, so all I can do is speculate.”
“So…what’s going to happen now? He didn’t recognize me.”
“Hopefully, these files will integrate with his directory trees without incident, and he’ll slowly come back to himself after he processes all the data.” That was a best case scenario, and Ratchet didn’t bother to hide that from the knight, resting a servo on his shoulder. “If not…he’ll need a lot of help, kid. Until the data normalizes, there are going to essentially be two Rungs in that mech’s processor. I know he’s told you that his life started in the Institute. This other Rung, this is the Rung he was before that, with no knowledge of the desert, or of his life from the point he was taken, up to now.” Wing risked a glance over his shoulder, peeking at Rung, who was fussing over Red Alert, and glaring at Drift when the nomad stopped him from untying the mech.
“To him, it must seem like he fell asleep in the institute and woke up here the next morning. It’s going to take a while, and he’s going to depend on all of us, even if he doesn’t want to, until he comes back to himself.”
Wing nodded, still watching as his mate smoothed a gentle servo over the bound mech’s forehead and whispered to him, something that had the mech beaming up at him.
~~~~~
“You want me to eat what?” Rung asked incredulously, eyeing the meat Drift offered him with something like horror on his face. Wing wondered if he’d looked the same way when Rung had first offered him a meal.
What he wanted to do was to take the small frame into his lap, wrap his arms around him, and shield him from everything. Feed him by hand, show him that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed, pull him into their nest and never leave again, because outside the nest, bad things seemed to always happen.
But what he wanted to do, and what he had to do were two completely different things. Rung eyed him with distrust and fear any time he drew near, so he found himself walking next to Ratchet, instead. He would have joined Whirl in the sky, but the copter had been firm that he wouldn’t let Wing offline himself in a sand dune somewhere while his mate wasn’t around to keep him grounded. He’d taken off in a flurry of rotors, speeding away towards the meeting place to hunt down a mech Ratchet had asked him to find, and to let Megatron know what was going on.
So Wing was left on the ground, dragging his pedes behind the medic, when they finally walked into the bustling campsite.
If things had been different, he would have been happy to take in the sights with slack jawed amazement. The camp was easily ten or more times larger than what he’d grown used to with the tribe. Mechs he’d never seen before moved between the tents with a purpose, talking away in that weird combination of tones and clicks. Little ones rolled and chased and played in the clear areas, laughing and pouncing on one another with no regard for which tribe they belonged to, rolling up into their little armored balls and letting themselves be rolled around by other sparklings like big toys.
And ahead of them, casting a shadow over the massive gathering, were the falls.
Wing’s optic was caught, and he found it difficult to look away. It was a formation worthy of admiration. Mercury bubbled up from an underground spring somewhere beneath the enormous dune, and cascaded down the one side, gathering in large pools where time had worn away at the surface, and spilling over to the next, lower, bowl, till it collected in a shining, mirror covered lake at the base of the falls. Mechs sat around the shoreline, talking, eating, laughing.
If their situation hadn’t been so dire, he would have found it inspiring, how mechs from different tribes mingled without distrust or hatred in their sparks. The city mechs found that difficult to do between cities, and yet these ‘barbarians’ could lay aside weapons and differences, and come together so easily.
As it was, he found it hard to tear himself away from the beauty presented to him. But Rung was standing in the middle of a crowd of tribesmechs, looking extremely uncomfortable as they greeted him like old friends, friends whose faces he didn't recognize, who grabbed at him, clapping him on the back and pressing helms together with an ease that spoke of familiarity and comfort. The small mech had a smile on his face, but it was one Wing recognized, not from his mate because he'd never seen a smile the other didn't mean. It was the smile of a socialite, a senator, a doctor, in an unfamiliar setting. Forced, tight, not reaching his optics.
Wing stepped in, garnering the attention and shock of the tribe, drawing attention off his uncomfortable mate.
Servos grabbed at him, and he suffered it gladly, forcibly reminding himself that these mech meant him no harm as they studied his wounds, his distorted and discolored plating. Grumbles and snarls were made, in the nomad language and in Neo-Cybex for his benefit, demanding to know what had happened.
Thankfully, Ratchet had followed him into the mass of frames, and pulled them both out with a snarl, at them, at the others, Wing couldn't be sure. Either way, he led them off, shouting at the protesting crowd over his shoulder to give them some time to get the 'stink of the city off before you start demanding a blow by blow.'
Wing followed along dutifully, watching Rung from the corner of his optic. The mech was studying him in turn, and the only reason he could tell was because those ever present goggles were gone, left behind in the mess of the Institute. Without them, he looked older and younger at once, somehow, face lighter without the heavy coverings, but the lines of his face prominent, casting shadows under his optics. He wanted to stoop down, to sweep him up in his arms and pepper his face with kisses till the confusion and pain smoothed away, but multiple things stood in his way, not the least of which being that his mate didn't really recognize him. It felt so strange to curse any mech, to wish ill on them, but for the first time since he took up the oaths of the Circle, he found himself doing just that. It sat uneasily in his tank, making him nauseous.
They locked optics, and Rung was quick to look away, flushing and rubbing at his nose.
"Here," Ratchet finally said, having lead them a good distance away while he'd been caught up in his thoughts, and rounding a smaller outcropping revealed a small, clear solvent pool. "Get cleaned up. Drift and I'll be close by, so nobody'll bug you." With that, the dusty medic stomped away through the short, scrubby growth, back towards the outcropping, and Drift. The nomad lifted a servo, waving to them, then linked servos with Ratchet and led him away around the edge of the raised ground, out of sight, but not out of audial range should they be needed.
Wing hovered for a minute, scuffing his toe cap in the grainy dirt and sand mixture that made up the majority of the area. Rung looked at him, twisting his servos together in front of his spark glass and chewing on his lip.
“You…you want to go first?” Rung gestured to the pool, the sun glistening on the surface of the cool, inviting cleanser.
“It’s more than big enough for the both of us.” Wing risked pointing out, and it was. The little pool wasn’t massive by any stretch of the imagination, but two mechs Wing or Ratchet’s size could fit without coming in contact with one another. Even if that was exactly the opposite of what Wing wanted.
“I-I suppose it is…” Rung looked away, face bright red, and didn’t that take Wing back to before this whole institute mess, when he wouldn’t meet Wing’s optics and flushed so prettily.
Wing held out a servo, hope flooding his field despite his best intentions. Rung chewed on his lip, staring at the proffered servo and clearly thinking carefully about what to do.
Finally, he accepted the offer. Wing folded his fingers around the smaller servo with a silent sigh of relief, and helped him pick his way down the steep bank and into the cool cleanser.
For a while, they sat in silence, each soaking in the refreshing liquid and sticking to their own side of the pool. Rung only moved closer when Wing attempted to clean the grit out of gears in his arm with his claw. Clumsy, dangerous, he nicked a wire and energon trickled down his arm into the solvent, staining it pink.
"Here, may I?" It took almost more control than Wing had to not tell the smaller bot that they were mates, of course he could. Instead, he nodded mutely, and held perfectly still for the other as he waded closer and inspected the damage. Gentle servos prodded between plates, coming away slicked with pink.
"It's already clotting, so there's that." Rung laughed, a nervous little chitter that sounded so wrong, so fake. "I can help you, if you'd like..." Wing nodded mutely, continuing to hold still as those servos carefully picked out grit and other unwanted things from between his joints.
"How did... How did this happen?" The question was cautious, whispered to the space between them while a single servo traced the angry weld line across his wrist. The claw clasped reflexively, and Rung pulled back. Wing chanced it, reaching out with his servo to grab hold of the other mech's wrist.
Rung froze, looking up at Wing, mouth open in a shocked little 'o' that Wing desperately wanted to kiss. Instead, he just kept a loose hold on the slim wrist, thumb rubbing at the softer, thinner metal near his servo.
"A long story, and if you can't remember it, that's a good thing..."
"You...you seem very familiar with me..." Rung stuttered, optics darting back and forth, flush intensifying every time he laid optics on Wing.
"We know each other. I'm torn..." Wing hesitated, and Rung made a curious noise, looking up at his face, optics wide, "I want, desperately, for you to remember me... But I.. I don't want you to remember what we've been through the last few days..."
The nomad regressed to city mech frowned again, and shook his helm. “It’s not-It’s not that I don’t remember… I just can’t access the files. I know they’re there. Just, inaccessible. I know I know you, I just don’t know how.” He’d stepped in closer as he spoke, optics locked on his chest to avoid his optic, and Wing was shocked to realize just how close he’d gotten when he put both servos on his cracked cockpit. The lack of depth perception was going to be the death of him if he didn’t acclimate soon.
He guided the mech to sit on a little grouping of rocks peeking up out of the pool, and sat next to him, running a cleaning cloth over the patches of grime that had accumulated around bleeding wounds. Rung looked down at the buckled plating, the gashes and tears in armor with wide optics, servos rattling against his thighs as he held still for the careful ministrations.
When he was done, he set the cloth aside, and put his servo and claw in his own lap, looking down at them while he tried to find the words to say. A servo cupped the side of his helm, and he jerked back, startled. Rung followed him, standing to be at a better height and leaning over, fingers still gentle on the rim of his optical housing, thumb brushing the base of a pedipalp.
“This…there was talk of it, of a new form of punishment. I lobbied against it for years.” The fingers curled around the lip of the housing, still soft and gentle, but oh so close to his single optic that he couldn’t help but flinch.
“It’s very common now.” He admitted, encircling the small, so small, so breakable wrist with his servo, holding him in place when he tried to pull away.
“There’s no excuse for this sort of mutilation!” Wing flinched at the sudden explosion, the calm and soothing energies of his mate’s field whipped into a passionate frenzy, replaced with righteous anger/conviction/disbelief. “I can’t believe you could do anything to deserve this!”
“I-We rescued a friend from the people that did this. This was my punishment.” Wing chose not to mention the repeated reminders Trepan had given him that this was, in fact, punishment for associating with Rung. He’d take that secret to the Well with him, whether his Rung came back or not.
Rung was quiet for long minutes, cupping Wing’s helm in both servos now and leaning in to press their foreheads together. Wing shifted, trying to not notice how odd it felt, for his optic and housing to be nearly as large as Rung’s face now, and how his focal point was no longer in the same spot, how he couldn’t refocus his optics to take in his whole face, how he could only see the bridge of his nasal ridge, and the slight indent, the shiny patch of metal where his goggles sat day in and day out.
“You didn’t deserve this. There is no justification for this type of punishment, and especially not what you have done.” Rung spoke slowly and clearly, backing it up with a firm touch of his field to Wing’s, an almost physical caress of energy against his plating. For the first time in weeks, his frame relaxed, armor flaring out and settling. He couldn’t stop himself from wrapping his arms around Rung, and the other mech squeaked when he was pulled into a tight embrace, Wing’s helm burrowing into his shoulder.
Finally, careful servos reached around, resting against his back and stroking carefully at the empty channel for his Greatsword. His field was careful, full of calm and soothing emotions but nothing too personal, and it was a painful reminder that the embrace may be familiar, but this wasn’t the mech he’d grown to love. But maybe, if he didn’t come back, maybe they could start over again. Maybe it was for the best that Rung couldn’t remember all the horrible things that had happened to him since the Institute’s first go round with him. Maybe it was best he didn’t remember the rocky start to their relationship.
Maybe they’d be all right, in the end.